… Third Generation of QLogic 10GbE CNAs

QLogic Corp. announced that its third-generation 10GbE converged networking adapter (3GCNA) portfolio is optimized for Cisco Systems, Inc.‘s Data Center Fabric.

Cisco integrates Unified Computing, Unified Fabric, and Unified Network Services into the holistic Cisco Data Center Fabric that is designed to be simple, scalable and secure, delivering any application across any location, within the data center, across data centers, or to the cloud. Combined with Cisco Data Center Fabric, QLogic 3GCNA products, available through QLogic’s worldwide network of authorized resellers, deliver end-to-end convergence and intelligence for secure cloud computing and virtualized data centers.

Traditional network architectures continue to evolve to virtualized cloud infrastructures, reducing IT costs and network complexities, increasing application efficiencies and driving business agility. Virtualized workloads demand unprecedented levels of I/O and protocol offload assistance to meet cloud application service requirements. QLogic and Cisco are addressing these challenges through innovative architecture designs that effectively meet today’s technical and business economies.

The QLogic 10GbE 3GCNA portfolio is designed to drive server edge innovation, simplifying network design and increasing scalability without additional complexity and overhead. QLogic 3GCNA adapters excel in cloud computing environments, utilizing QLogic’s ConvergeFlex technology, which enables convergence of storage and data networking over 10GbE through concurrent multiprotocol support, including TCP/IP, FCoE, and iSCSI on the same hardware. QLogic’s VMflex technology virtualizes physical 10GbE ports into virtual ports, each capable of iSCSI, FCoE or TCP/IP protocols and allows for VM-to-VM communication within physical machines, without involving switches, resulting in lower latencies and increased performance for virtualized data centers. QLogic’s interoperable iSCSI and FCoE solutions, including boot-from-SAN features, offer cloud service providers and the converged enterprise low CPU utilization while running multiple, simultaneous protocols.

"Cisco technology partners, such as QLogic, are vital to the continued success of our joint customers’ deployments," said Jackie Ross, vice president of marketing, Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group for Cisco. "Cisco Data Center Fabric provides the architectural flexibility to deliver any application at any location in a highly secure manner on platforms that are converged, scalable and intelligent. With this launch, Cisco continues a three-year trend of delivering innovation by augmenting our Data Center Business Advantage portfolio to allow customers to take advantage of both existing investments and evolving trends, including virtualization and cloud."

Differentiating Cisco Data Center Fabric, Cisco is introducing a list of technology innovations, including Adapter FEX and VM-FEX with true fabric extension and manageability into virtual machines, which complements QLogic’s 3GCNA virtualization features. Adapter FEX enables the efficient utilization of 10GbE bandwidth across server adapters and switches in the server access layer, extending the current Cisco Fabric Extender solution into servers and enabling server adapters to be logically partitioned into multiple virtual NICs. Adapter FEX provides a single point of management from the access layer switch that manages and controls the end-to-end connectivity between server adapters and the switches in virtualized environments.

Cisco VM-FEX extends the switching fabric all the way to the server hypervisor. By providing switching of VM traffic in hardware switches instead of using a software switch within the hypervisor, Cisco customers achieve performance through the consolidation of virtual and physical access layers. VM-FEX enables efficient utilization of 10GbE bandwidth with the ability to partition 10GbE server adapters to provide dedicated network bandwidth to individual applications or virtual machines.

"QLogic and Cisco have a longstanding history of working together to drive innovation in the data center, mutually focusing in recent years on delivering solutions that are optimized for virtualization and convergence," said Amit Vashi, vice president, marketing, Host Solutions Group, QLogic. "QLogic 10GbE converged network adapters with VMflex and ConvergeFlex innovations, coupled with Cisco’s multihop FCoE, unified manageability and VM-FEX/Adapter-FEX technologies allow end-to-end convergence over Ethernet and intelligence for cloud computing and virtual data centers."