QLogic Powers Fujitsu Eternus

QLogic Corp. announced that its FlexSuite technology has been embedded and is now shipping in Fujitsu ETERNUS disk storage systems.

FlexSuite technology enables Fujitsu to leverage a multi-protocol converged storage platform to deliver high-performance 16Gb FC storage solutions.

"QLogic has enabled Fujitsu to ship 16Gb FC using the latest QLogic FlexSuite multi-protocol technology," said Amit Vashi, VP marketing, host solutions group, QLogic. "QLogic’s investments in this versatile I/O controller and accelerated target-mode development processes enable storage customers to deliver early-to-market, end-to-end, high-performance, multi-protocol connectivity solutions for next-generation data centers that are secure and highly reliable."

QLogic 16Gb FC adapters deliver twice the throughput and three times the transaction speeds of previous-generation 8Gb FC products while maintaining backward-compatibility with 8Gb and 4Gb FC investments.

"QLogic is a longstanding, trusted provider of high performance FC and Ethernet connectivity solutions for Fujitsu storage systems that span over six generations of products," said Yasuhiro Arikawa, SVP, storage systems unit, Fujitsu Limited. "By standardizing on the QLogic FlexSuite technology, and leveraging QLogic’s accelerated target mode development platform, we have reduced our development cycles and gained a time-to-market advantage. This advantage allows us to deliver storage solutions that address the high performance storage virtualization market requirements of the next-generation data center."

FlexSuite technology offers storage OEM partners:

Flexibility and Accelerated Time-to-Market

• A common, multi-protocol hardware platform accelerates time-to-market through a highly leveraged, single development and qualification cycle for 16Gb FC, 10Gb FCoE and 10Gb/1Gb iSCSI.
• QLogic API that is identical to previous-generation 8Gb FC and 10GbE controllers provides OEM software teams with an easy migration path to next-generation speeds and offers the flexibility to leverage existing software investments to deliver next-generation storage appliances.
• QLogic’s target mode development kit enables storage OEMs to develop custom boards as well as drivers without significant incremental investments in software development and testing. The kit consists of documentation to develop hardware and software, reference driver source code across popular OS environments including FreeBSD, Linux SCST, Target Core Module – Linux-iSCSI.org (TCM/LIO) and Solaris Comstar, as well as diagnostic and manufacturing tools.

Capabilities for Target Mode Deployments

• Full offloads for all block storage protocols (FC, FCoE and iSCSI)
• Concurrent FCoE and iSCSI operation on the same physical port
• T10-PI support, an increasingly important requirement among storage vendors for ensuring data integrity from host to storage media
• A programmable architecture that allows for feature customization and performance optimizations tuned for the OEM partner
• Capability to enable extended logins and exchanges that are more than twice those being offered by QLogic’s nearest competitor
• Online field debugging tools such as enhanced Hardware Assist Firmware Tracing (eHAFT) to enable higher up-time

HA Architecture

• QLogic’s port-level isolation architecture adds an additional layer of reliability and security with each port having its own set of processors, memory and firmware resources, ensuring that if one port should encounter issues, the second, isolated port continues to function securely and without interruption. This allows Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems to deliver secure, deterministically predictive and scalable performance for enterprise customers.