QLogic FlexSuite Provides 16Gb FC and 10GbE iSCSI Connectivity

QLogic Corporation is providing the converged interface for Dot Hill’s ninth-generation storage architecture.

The new platform provides Dot Hill’s OEM customers and channel partners with the industry’s midrange 16Gb Gen 5 FC/10Gb iSCSI converged networking storage systems. Products based on the new Dot Hill architecture are now shipping worldwide through a tier-one OEM.

“Customers want higher bandwidth and greater flexibility in their storage solutions, and we’ve responded with the launch of our ninth-generation architecture,” said Ken Day, CTO, Dot Hill. “This platform takes advantage of the revolutionary QLogic FlexSuite dual-personality adapter technology to provide our customers with the fastest FC and iSCSI connectivity available today, all from the same hardware. Our converged interface architecture delivers unparalleled flexibility, allowing organizations to instantly convert their storage from Gen 5 FC to 10Gb iSCSI and vice versa.”

“Leading storage array vendors, such as Dot Hill, are able to deliver the most flexible, high-bandwidth storage solutions in the industry by leveraging QLogic FlexSuite dual-personality technology. By eliminating the need to ‘rip and replace’ existing hardware when transitioning to a new infrastructure, QLogic FlexSuite reduces complexity and future-proofs SAN investments,” said Amit Vashi, VP of products, technology and planning, QLogic. “By working closely with QLogic engineering and the QLogic application programming interface (API), Dot Hill is able to transition seamlessly from current architectures and speed time-to-market when delivering next-generation storage solutions. This partnership with Dot Hill illustrates why QLogic is the leader in iSCSI and FC connectivity solutions for storage target customers.”

The Dot Hill architecture with FlexSuite technology future-proofs IT investments by providing backward-compatibility with existing 1GbE iSCSI, and 4Gb and 8Gb FC devices, while ensuring organizations can adapt their storage as future needs change. With a quick swap of a transceiver module, IT administrators can configure their storage in the field to Gen 5 FC or 10GbE iSCSI. The converged interface includes two four-port controllers; each controller can be configured with four Gen 5 FC ports, four 10GbE iSCSI ports, or a combination of both FC and iSCSI ports.

QLogic accelerates time-to-market and eases deployment of next-generation storage solutions. The effort to rewrite drivers and perform qualification testing for both firmware and hardware can be significant. Engineers API compatibility across generations of products for migrations, resulting in faster time-to-market and easier deployments. This allows storage OEMs to take advantage of previous testing and ‘soak times’ to qualify systems in a timelier manner for production environments.

FlexSuite delivers reliability, security and data availability. The dual-port ASIC is designed with the company’s multi-port traffic isolation feature for greater reliability and security on dual-port implementations. This architecture, with complete on-chip CPU and memory isolation across both ports of the adapter, ensures that if one port should encounter issues, the second, isolated port will continue to function securely and without interruption.

With two independent channels, I/O imbalances, error recovery or firmware updates on one port do not impact the second port. This enables the adapter to offer secure, deterministically predictive and scalable port performance and increased reliability. This is essential for enterprise data centers-assuring high level of availability for mission-critical applications.

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QLogic FlexSuite Technology Chosen for Dot Hill Storage Architecture
Storage systems with 16Gb Gen 5 FC/10Gb iSCSI converged network interface