QLogic with FCoE CNA on a Single Chip

QLogic Corp. announced the immediate availability of its new QLogic 8100 Series of PCI-Express converged network adapters (CNAs), based on the company’s advanced new Network Plus Architecture. QLogic’s first-to-market advantage with intelligent converged fabric technology has enabled the company to secure a significant number of server and storage OEM design wins.

 
“While some vendors talk visions and announce their hopes and dreams, QLogic is busy taking the FCoE market by storm,” said Tom Trainer, president of storage research consultancy Analytico, Inc. “QLogic is at least 12 months ahead of the competition in the FCoE space and Analytico predicts that the company will continue to accelerate its established lead.”
 
The data centre is evolving and converging—where higher speed networking is enabling communications between all IT resources, including compute, storage, clients, voice, LAN and internal and external clouds. As the data centre is becoming a virtual set of networked resources and intelligent converged fabrics, QLogic’s FCoE solutions are at the centre of this convergence, allowing data centre managers to combine the lossless features of Fibre Channel with the ubiquitous connectivity of Ethernet. According to Gartner Research vice president, Roger Cox, FCoE will become one of the important technologies associated with cost containment and modernisation initiatives for IT infrastructures over the coming years.

“With today’s announcement, QLogic achieved what no other vendor to date has been able to do in the FCoE space,” said Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW, a leading storage research consultancy. “ ‘Show me the silicon’ captures the essence of what QLogic delivered today, a new integrated single chip ASIC optimized for virtualised, converged data centre environments utilizing bandwidth-intensive SSDs. QLogic is clearly at the forefront of making FCoE a tangible reality.”
 
“We’ve been successfully collaborating with tier one OEMs on integrating QLogic’s latest FCoE solutions into their servers and storage systems for the past six months and have now established a significant time-to-market advantage,” said Amit Vashi, vice president of marketing, QLogic Host Solutions Group. “In this challenging macroeconomic environment, customers are looking for savings across a multitude of dimensions—in power, space, cooling and management—and are eager to repurpose and redeploy existing infrastructure wherever possible. The Network Plus Architecture introduces a whole new era of cost savings to the data centre. Mark this day—this is new technology and represents the starting point of 21st century data centres.”
 
According to Dell’Oro Group, FCoE adapter shipments are expected to more than double each year for the next five years. “We forecast that FCoE adapter shipments will grow from less than two thousand ports in 2008 to approach two million ports in 2013,” said Seamus Crehan, vice president at Dell’Oro Group.

Introducing the Network Plus Architecture
Exhibiting the highest degrees of volumetric efficiency in the industry, the world’s first fully integrated CNA-on-a-chip is based on the QLogic Network Plus Architecture, incorporating memory, processors and SerDes—with no external components required—and is specifically designed for space and power-constrained environments such as blade servers and high-density storage systems. The Network Plus Architecture represents the very latest in ASIC design technology and manufacturing and shares many commonalities with the world’s largest installed base of Fibre Channel adapters—over six million QLogic Fibre Channel HBA ports globally—including common storage APIs and management tools.
 
The new QLogic ASIC based on the Network Plus Architecture handles storage and data networking traffic at full 10GbE line speeds, consumes only one third the power of existing CNA chip sets and generates far less heat—eliminating the need for a heat sink.  Leveraging the established architecture of the market-leading QLogic 2500 Series Fibre Channel adapters, it’s also the first single-chip CNA with an integrated, full FCoE offload engine, enabling faster application performance while saving precious CPU resources, which translates to higher degrees of server virtualisation in the data centre.
 
“QLogic’s Network Plus Architecture is a core enabling technology which brings separate network infrastructures together into a single, converged, Enhanced Ethernet network. To CIOs, this means lower cost connectivity, centralized network management and more flexible provisioning of data centre resources through a single pipe, all at 10GbE speeds,” said Dave Vellante, president and co-founder of Wikibon, the world’s first Web 2.0 technology research and advisory community.
 
“Not only will this enable IT organizations to deploy next-generation technology, it should also give QLogic a significant go-to-market jump on its competitors with regards to design wins and provide an opportunity to educate and train IT end-users on the value of convergence,” said Bob Laliberte, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Converging the network will help companies transition away from the legacy silo’d technology domains and move towards a unified IT staff focused on delivering higher levels of service to the business.”

Introducing the QLogic 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters
Based on the advanced Network Plus Architecture, the QLogic 8100 Series is a family of PCI-Express CNAs designed for next-generation, virtualised and unified data centres with powerful multi-processor, multi-core servers. Available in multiple form factors, including standard and mezzanine cards, the adapters offer full certification for nearly every OS, including Windows Server, Linux, AIX and HP-UX, and virtualisation platforms, such as VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer, as well as any hardware platform from PowerPC to Nehalem. The QLogic 8100 Series CNAs are optimized for both data and storage networking virtualisation with superior 10GbEE performance to handle massive quantities of virtual machines.
 
Commenting on today’s announcement, Tony Asaro, founder and senior consultant for the INI Group, said: “The ability to use a single card that supports SAN, LAN, backup networks and management networks is powerful and can save customers a ton of money and headaches. I believe that this is an important milestone in networking that is, in my view, long overdue.”

Unparalleled Industry Support
 
Cisco
“Cisco and QLogic continue our commitment to unifying data and storage networks through FCoE,” said Soni Jiandani, vice president, Server Access and Virtualisation Business Unit, Cisco. “The new QLogic single-chip CNA is another breakthrough for this technology that will further extend the benefits of converged networks, an important value proposition of our Nexus 5000 Series switches and our recently announced Unified Computing System.”

Dell
“Along with QLogic, Dell is further enabling the Unified Fabric to address our customers’ most significant pain points. With the introduction of this new ASIC, we will be able to jointly deliver enhanced performance and reduced power consumption for our customers who need 10GbE performance and desire to converge their Fibre Channel SANs into a common, unified, Ethernet fabric. These capabilities make this an ideal solution for blade server and virtualisation environments,” said Larry Hart, worldwide senior manager, Storage & Networking, Dell.
 
EMC
“EMC believes that converged networks are an important part of helping to make data centres more efficient,” said Barbara Robidoux, vice president, Storage Marketing, EMC. “EMC’s leadership in testing, integrating and offering FCoE technologies to customers is the result of collaboration with key partners like QLogic. As this important market segment continues to emerge, we are continuing to work with QLogic and support their FCoE converged network adapter initiatives.”

HP
“Customers are looking to lower costs and simplify data centre infrastructures,” said Bob Wilson, vice president, Storage Platforms Group, StorageWorks Division, HP. “HP and QLogic are well-positioned to help customers who wish to leverage FCoE to converge their networks and upgrade their SAN environments—meeting their growing business needs.”

IBM
“While Fibre Channel over Ethernet technology offers benefits of reduced cost and simpler management, moving to FCoE will be a challenge for some,” said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM BladeCenter. “With IBM BladeCenter and the QLogic CNAs, our clients will be able to converge networks in a way that protects their current data centre investment, and offers flexibility when making the transition.”
 
Microsoft
“As our customers look to further extend the benefits that Microsoft virtualisation technology delivers in creating a more dynamic data centre, technologies such as FCoE can help achieve that while further reducing operating costs,” said Dai Vu, director, Virtualisation Solutions Marketing, Microsoft. “Microsoft has announced plans to support FCoE with an upcoming logo program and we look forward to QLogic’s participation to qualify their FCoE adapters for use by our mutual customers.”

NetApp
“As an industry leader in FCoE and unified storage, NetApp is committed to supporting QLogic’s new FCoE infrastructure products to provide customers with enhanced flexibility, cost-savings, and performance,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing, NetApp. “NetApp and QLogic have a strong and long-standing relationship and as a result we enable customers to take advantage of both Fibre Channel SAN and Ethernet through our joint FCoE solution offerings.”
 
Sun
“Many enterprise data centres continue to operate separate Ethernet data networks and separate Fibre Channel storage networks,” said Gautam Chanda, Group Manager, Networking Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Maintaining separate networks can lead to increased power, cooling, management and hardware costs. QLogic’s FCoE solutions will enable the consolidation of data and storage networking and lead to reduced costs for our customers.”

VMware
“Customers continue to consolidate their data centres with the help of VMware’s industry-leading virtualisation platform as they move toward creating private cloud computing environments,” said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances, VMware. “With FCoE, intelligent converged fabrics enabled by innovative solutions such as those from QLogic can unify data and storage traffic onto a single network, providing a solid foundation for customers to deliver IT as a service.”