Emulex FCoE Adapter Certified for VMware ESX

Emulex Corporation announced that the Emulex LightPulse LP21000 family of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) has been certified for VMware ESX. Emulex CNAs provide VMware customers with transparent network and storage connectivity for both physical and virtual environments, coupled with the ability to leverage existing management tools and processes associated with Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) already deployed.
 
“Emulex has long been a leader in developing and driving new storage technologies and standards such as N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) to fuel server virtualization adoption, and today’s announcement is indicative of the continued trend towards convergence in the data center,” said Taufik Ma, vice president of product marketing, Emulex. “VMware customers using Emulex CNAs within virtualized server environments will now be able to experience the same usability, management capabilities and best-in-class connectivity they expect from Emulex seamlessly within a unified network.”
 
The Emulex LP21000 family of CNAs leverage eight generations of field-proven Fibre Channel technology, allowing companies to extend their Fibre Channel investments while deploying a next-generation unified fabric in their data centers under a common management platform. Recent third-party testing by the Enterprise Strategy Group revealed Emulex CNAs mirror the capabilities of Emulex Fibre Channel HBAs while reducing data center cabling and lowering operational costs. With a converged network utilizing FCoE, network traffic can be seamlessly transported over an Enhanced 10Gb/s Ethernet network, while reducing the number of ports, cards inside servers and cables by approximately 50 percent.
 
“Continued adoption of server virtualization is driving the need for simplified networking and fabric convergence. Emulex has been working with VMware to deliver enterprise-class interconnect solutions for these next-generation data centers, certified to operate with VMware virtualization,” said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances at VMware. “Emulex CNAs, like its HBAs, are a great complement to the VMware platform, allowing customers to take full advantage of the server consolidation, robust manageability, and high availability of VMware virtualized environments.”
 
Emulex CNAs also support Emulex’s Virtual HBA technology with industry-standard NPIV, which allows customers to effectively "virtualize" SAN connections so that each virtual machine has independent access to its own protected storage. This provides several benefits, including the ability to track and chargeback the storage utilization at the virtual machine level using Emulex’s HBAnyware management suite.
 
“When Cisco introduced the Nexus 5000 10GE server access switch with support for FCoE, we also introduced an eco-system of partners who supported the platform and the FCoE technology,” said Ed Bugnion, CTO, Server Access and Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco. “With the certification of the Emulex LP21000 by VMware, this ecosystem has been extended to server virtualization, enhancing customers’ ability to consolidate their data center resources.”
 
“FCoE technologies, such as Emulex CNAs, can help provide a clear path for data center managers looking to converge multiple fabrics onto a single network in order to further streamline operations and lower infrastructure costs in virtualized server environments,” said Barbara Robidoux, EMC Vice President, Storage Product Marketing. “The EMC E-Lab is working closely with Emulex to ensure that its CNAs are qualified and fully interoperable with EMC’s leading networked storage systems so that data center managers will be able to seamlessly deploy new FCoE capabilities when they are ready.”
 

For more information on Emulex LightPulse CNAs