Converged Storage Networks From Storage Engine

Storage Engine, Inc. announces the addition of converged networking fabrics to its open storage connectivity solutions for virtualized data centers and private cloud deployments.

Based upon open standards for Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FcOE), RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), and iSCSI extensions for RDMA (iSER), these offerings allow customers to build flexible service oriented networks for different application workloads and/or multi-tenant environments.

For years, Storage Engine’s Synchronism solution has enabled customers to cost effectively connects application servers to existing FC and iSCSI attached storage platforms across multiple networking protocols. With the addition of the new converged fabrics, customers will recognize even further savings in connectivity and management costs.

Synchronism is fully certified for use with multiple third party SAN platforms across Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and now Converged Enhanced Ethernet (10 GigE). End to end solutions are enabled via Converged Network Adapters for servers, virtualization appliances for connecting multi-vendor storage, and converged fabric switches for high speed lossless networks.

Customers can build scale out fabrics from multiple Top of Rack (TOR) and Core switches with Unified Fabric Management software. The resulting network designs are flatter and more scalable, with configurable quality of service parameters for guaranteed bandwidth, roaming virtual port profiles, etc.

As data center architectures move away from traditional application silos to dynamic virtualized environments, the need increases for converged scale out fabrics as opposed to hierarchical router/switch networks. Users can recognize benefits in adopting converged networks via lower rack space, power and cabling costs, simplified network device management, and better isolation and control of network resources.

Shops running Oracle RAC, DB2 Purescale, and VMware environments will see immediate performance benefits from the low latency attributes of converged I/O fabrics. For example CPU utilization is lowered and storage vMotion is faster with these fabrics rather than what’s possible with traditional FC and Ethernet networks.