QLogic Shipping Stackable 8Gb FC Switch

QLogic Corp. announced general availability of the QLogic SANbox 5800V Series, the industry’s first stackable 8Gb Fibre Chanel switch.

The new switch incorporates several breakthrough technologies that deliver a new class of Fibre Channel SAN with unmatched levels of performance at up to 50 percent lower cost than comparatively-configured competitive offerings. The SANbox 5800V Series is the industry’s only stackable 8Gb Fibre Channel switch solution, providing an architecture that eliminates the cost of building SANs using storage and server switch ports for inter-switch links. The SANbox 5800 Series features the industry’s first 20Gb Fibre Channel ports as an innovative stack-interconnect – each port can handle the inter-switch traffic of up to three 8Gb links running at full speed. The SANbox 5800V Series also features 100Gb Virtual Lanes, a game-changing technology which automatically pools multiple stack-interconnects to form a single 100Gb virtual lane between stackable switches. Available today from Sun Microsystems and authorized QLogic channel partners, SANbox 5800V Series configurations start at eight ports and scale cost-effectively to configurations with 120 ports.

"We are in an era where customers expect some form of virtualization technology to be present in every new product in order to maximize utilization of their infrastructure," said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager, QLogic Network Solutions Group. "With scalability from eight 8Gb Fibre Channel ports to over a hundred ports plus 100Gb stack interconnects, the SANbox 5800V Series is built from the ground up to stand out in highly virtualized environments."