Emulex OneCore Storage SDK for Server and Storage Appliances

Emulex Corporation announced the OneCore Storage software development kit
(SDK), a solution for independent hardware and software vendors (IHVs
and ISVs) and system integrators who are developing storage, SSD,
application and networking appliance solutions that require low latency
and high performance I/O connectivity.

The OneCore Storage SDK includes a collection of high performance
initiator and target driver source code, documentation, training and
support which allows IHVs/ISVs to leverage Emulex Engine (XE) 201
converged fabric controller technology, which is capable of 8GFC and
16GFC and 10GbE, FCoE and iSCSI I/O connectivity, within their own
storage networking solutions.

"The Emulex XE201 converged fabric controller-based products will
help appliance partners develop solutions to address the explosive
growth of optimized solutions for enterprise, cloud, SSD/flash and big
data," said Shaun Walsh, SVP of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "This
new SDK enables IHVs and ISVs to accelerate their time to market with
complementary high performance I/O connectivity solutions, powered by
Emulex, that are ideal for keeping pace with the demands of I/O caching,
highly virtualized environments and performance hungry applications
that need more bandwidth, throughput and faster response times."

The OneCore Storage SDK simplifies and accelerates the process of
developing storage solutions based on Emulex’s code base, with an
extensible, modular framework and architecture. Leveraging a
straightforward, easy to use click-through end user licensing agreement
streamlines and simplifies the procurement of the tool kit. It includes
the SDK device driver source code, release notes, documentation,
training, and access to a developer portal, as well as a community
support forum.

Additional benefits
of the OneCore Storage Developers program include:

• Elastic Driver Development Approach: IHVs/ISVs can leverage
  the Emulex target and initiator reference drivers in several ways: as
  the foundation of their driver, utilizing specific layer(s) as the
  building block for their driver, or as reference code for their own
  driver development. The OneCore Storage SDK also provides a common
  driver framework and architecture that will support all storage
  protocols (FC, FCoE and iSCSI).
• Extensible Modular Driver Architecture: The OneCore Storage
  SDK has been designed to be protocol and OS agnostic. This unique
  driver architecture provides a clean, easily understood reference driver
  which can be used by customers as the foundation or as a building block
  for their driver. The OneCore Storage SDK consists of Emulex’s Service
  Level Interface (SLI), Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), transport code
  and abstracted OS interfaces for OS-specific implementations. It also
  contains a SCSI-like API for back-end target and initiator connectivity.
• For Storage, Flash Array and Appliance Vendors: With 16GFC
  adapters available, capable of more than 1.2 million IOPS on a single
  port, developers can leverage Emulex FC and FCoE technology to power
  their SSD/flash-based storage appliances, and take advantage of the
  performance and management characteristics needed to support virtualized
  servers and cloud deployments.
• Platform Support: OneCore Storage includes both Linux (Red
  Hat Enterprise Linux [RHEL] 6.2) and FreeBSD 9.0 SDKs. In addition, the
  OS agnostic design gives developers the option of porting the drivers to
  other OSes.
• Back-end Support: The OneCore Storage SDK architecture allows
  customers to utilize their own customer-specific back-end or standard
  Linux or FreeBSD back-ends.
• Standards Support: OneCore Storage SDK drivers provide
  support for standards such as N_Port Identification Virtualization
  (NPIV), which allows users to maintain SAN best practices within a
  virtualized environment, and T10 Protection Information (T10 PI),
  providing enhanced data protection against silent data corruption.