Broadcom Delivers FCoE, Qualified by EMC

At Cisco Live, Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference, Broadcom Corporation, in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, unveiled its fully interoperable FCoE offload solution on the world’s fastest CNA platform with performance speeds of up to 1.7 million IOPs – over 80 percent faster than the nearest competitor.

Enterprise data centers demand 10GbE bandwidth and FCoE connectivity to support server virtualization, consolidation and convergence. Broadcom’s FCoE-based converged network solutions allow IT professionals to unite data and storage networks on a common 10GbE fabric, while significantly reducing the cost of power, cooling and cabling.

The interoperable solution, tested and qualified by EMC Corp., reinforces Broadcom’s extensive range of storage and networking solutions by expanding multiprotocol support including Level 2 (L2) networking, NAS, iSCSI offload, and now FCoE offload connectivity. Broadcom has also completed joint OEM qualification with the Cisco switch and server teams as well as the Dell server team as part of the production and launch process with these vendors.

Broadcom’s FCoE solution received third-party validation from Demartek, an analyst organization specializing in the testing and analysis of network and storage solutions.

Broadcom FCoE support is available on select platforms:

• BCM957712A1213G dual-port 10GbE SFP+ adapter from Cisco
• 57712-k converged Network Daughter Card from Dell

Brian Payne, Executive Director of Platform Marketing, PowerEdge Server Portfolio, Dell, said: "By collaborating with Broadcom, we’re able to offer a flexible FCoE solution that leverages switch agnostic NIC portioning capable of handling dynamic  virtualized workloads. Our customers can now easily take advantage of the industry’s first switch-independent NIC partitioning that makes it possible to split the 10GbE pipe with granularity free of any fabric vendor lock-in. This allows users to build-out and pay as you go rather than being locked-in to a one size fits all solution."

Jeffrey A Rapini,  Enterprise Manager, Network, Security & Telecom, IT Saint Joseph Health System, said: "FCoE is an important technology advancement for our organization, providing significant reductions for our current technology footprint, while enabling increased scalability and density due to reduced power consumption and cooling. This allows us to achieve best in class performance for standard networking applications as well as our block storage applications running over FCoE, resulting in lower overall costs for the health system and a more efficient infrastructure, allowing us to better serve our patients."

Sergis Mushell, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said: "In recent years, we have seen a growing interest in FCoE technology. Semiconductor companies who understand the requirements of the LAN on motherboard (LOM) market and volume market silicon economics  will further drive 10GbE and FCoE adoption by providing FCoE support. FCOE should be a required feature from all 10GbE vendors, and can potentially be a catalyst for growth in the 10 GbE LOM and NIC market."

Dennis Martin, President Demartek, said: "Demartek just completed a comprehensive performance comparison of the top vendors in the CNA segment, including products from Broadcom, Emulex, Intel and QLogic. Broadcom dominated the benchmark analysis by demonstrating superior overall performance for both FCoE and iSCSI."

Bob Laliberte, Enterprise Strategy Group, said: "ESG research indicates enterprises top IT initiative for 2011 is to increase their use of server virtualization technology and networking teams report that simplifying and consolidating the data center network will be a top enabler of future server virtualization growth. Given these data points,  ESG expects FCoE to continue to ramp as organizations widen and mature their virtualized environments and deploy converged infrastructures. Broadcom’s fully qualified FCoE capability completes its convergence offering and has the potential to make them an industry leader in the growing CNA market."

Vinod Lakhani, General Manager, High Speed Controllers, Broadcom Corporation, said: "IT professionals rely on Broadcom’s network and storage solutions and now have the option to extend that functionality to upcoming FCoE deployments. By combining innovation honed over five generations of Ethernet controller technology, together with the expertise of industry leaders throughout the space, we have successfully delivered the highest performance FCoE-based CNA solutions in the industry."