Brocade and Emulex Collaborate on 32Gb FC Solutions

Emulex Corporation and Brocade Communication Systems, Inc. announced a commitment to jointly develop and align the two companies’ road-maps around a new generation of advanced Gen 6 (32Gb) FC networking solutions, enabling increased network performance, higher scalability and improved reliability for the highly virtualized data center.

Emulex and Brocade have a long history of driving industry innovation, including recently announced support for Brocade ClearLink diagnostics, which ensures the reliability and management of storage network configurations, and Emulex Gen 5 Flash Services, including ExpressLane, which provides QoS capabilities for flash/SSD-based storage and Emulex CrossLink which provides in-band message passing between server nodes, delivering optimized performance using lossless, standards-based FC protocols.

Emulex and Brocade are jointly developing technology to deliver:

• Network Performance with Gen 6 (32Gb) FC: They will partner to develop end-to-end 32GFC-based solutions that will improve performance and scalability to support the demands of virtualized data centers and flash/SSD-based applications.
• Extending FC’s Industry Reliability: They are delivering ClearLink, an advanced diagnostic solution, that performs in-band tests on both Brocade Gen 5 FC switches and Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs, which can detect problems with the physical cabling and optics that could result in increased error rates and intermittent problems.
• Enabling Flash and SSD Solutions: They will partner to create solutions that highlight Emulex’s ExpressLane and CrossLink technology which is designed to enhance the QoS, optimize I/O performance and increase ROI in IT environments using fabric-based flash arrays and server-based cache.

“Emulex and Brocade have been on the leading edge of innovation in FC for virtualization, flash/SSD and cloud applications,” said Shaun Walsh, SVP marketing and corporate development, Emulex. “We are committed to the long term future of FC, and are aggressively pursuing our Gen 6 FC roadmap. By working with Brocade, we will continue to be leaders in this strategic market, just as we have been in the Gen 5 FC market transition.“

“Brocade and Emulex are continuing to collaborate on innovative products to meet the needs of our mutual customers,” said Jack Rondoni, VP of product management, Brocade. “Customers clearly value the work we have done to integrate ClearLink with Emulex LightPulse Gen 5 FC HBAs and are looking to Emulex and Brocade for continued innovation, and this roadmap alignment ensures that we will meet their needs.“-