Emulex ExpressConfig Solutions With Canonical, HP, Mirantis, Red Hat and Quanta

Emulex Corporation announced a family of ExpressConfig Solutions designed to help IT professionals optimize I/O connectivity for cloud, hyperscale and enterprise environments.

By providing the necessary architecture, components, features, analysis, configuration settings and software drivers, ExpresConfig Solutions will help customers get the value out of the pre-designed integrated system.

The first solution in the series, ExpressConfig for OpenStack core networks, provides a blueprint leveraging Emulex I/O connectivity capabilities for allocating bandwidth, converging multiple protocols, safely isolating OpenStack core networks or applications, and managing the multiple networks typically associated with large-scale data centers.

“Emulex sees OpenStack as an I/O development platform that allows us to provide workload optimization services, orchestration management tools and engineered solutions that are ready to deploy for new hyperscale data centers and public or private cloud environments,” said Shaun Walsh, SVP marketing, Emulex. “The Emulex ExpressConfig Solutions leverage industry-leading Emulex Universal Multi-Channel (UMC) NIC partitioning with the open ecosystem of tools available in the OpenStack community to deliver on the growing demands for flexibility, scalability and lower operating costs.”

Today, OpenStack users can benefit from UMC NIC partitioning to optimize bandwidth allocation between the necessary public, private, storage and management networks. The UMC enables administrators to increase I/O performance and resource utilization, while reducing cost and power consumption by consolidating cables and network ports. In addition, UMC can ensure minimum bandwidth allocations are maintained, eliminating the potential for tunnel networks to be inadvertently starved by external traffic. For smaller configurations, those safeguards also prevent performance imbalances, enabling the shared use of hardware so the compute and storage nodes can reside on the same server. Where HA is important, UMC also provides better resiliency by improving network isolation against failures or security threats. Emulex products provide an effective way to allocate bandwidth, consolidate traffic types, improve resource utilization and provide flexibility for provisioning applications in large scale data centers.

Working with its partners such as Canonical Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP, Mirantis, Inc., Red Hat, Inc. and Quanta QCT (Quanta Computer, Inc.), Emulex is creating ExpressConfig Solutions for storage, networking, and big data applications that will be included with upcoming OpenStack releases. These solution blueprints build upon current capabilities to increase tenant density and resource utilization while improving performance, end-to-end QoS policy enforcement and power consumption. Solution focus areas will address key pain points like storage performance and scalability, virtualization and CPU overhead, tenant vulnerability to ‘noisy neighbor’ effects that misallocate bandwidth, and data protection and accessibility for database applications.

The upcoming ExpressConfig Solutions will include:

• Integrated software drivers for Neutron, Cinder and Horizon modules
• Multi-function feature validation confirming key features work as expected in combination with other components
• Performance characterization for important I/O metrics
• Solution design guides with configuration techniques and best practices
• Solution specific technical services and support
• Certification and commercial support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

The ExpressConfig Solutions are designed for use with OneConnect OCe14000 family of 10GbE and 40GbE NICs and CNAs, and provide tools, information and features that enable enterprises to save time, lower costs and increase confidence as they scale their cloud and hyperscale environments.

“We developed HP Helion OpenStack to give customers the ability to build, manage and consume applications across public, private and traditional IT environments,” said Mark Interrante, SVP, engineering, HP cloud. “The Emulex ExpressConfig Solutions complement HP Helion OpenStack with the ability to jumpstart customers’ deployments with the best practice guidelines, plug-ins and optimization capabilities necessary to get up and running quickly.”

“At Canonical, we’re working with customers who are doing extreme OpenStack with Ubuntu; these are huge scale-out scenarios that push OpenStack to its limits,” said Brian Fromme, technical partner manager, Canonical. “To achieve this, customers need solutions that ensure I/O, networking and resource optimization. Emulex’s announcement will help drive both the adoption of OpenStack as well as facilitate scale-out cloud environments.”

“OpenStack is becoming ideal for public and private cloud infrastructures, offering enterprises the flexibility and performance they need to deploy the myriad bandwidth-intensive applications emerging today,” said Boris Renski, CMO, Mirantis. “Emulex ExpressConfig Solutions, coupled with Mirantis OpenStack, will give customers a highly scalable solution that they can deploy quickly and efficiently, while reducing costs and deployment times.“

“More than ever, customers are looking for an open, flexible and easy-to-deploy solution for their cloud-based data centers,” said Mike Yang, GM, Quanta. “Emulex has built a reputation as a reliable and innovative partner that we rely upon to deliver advanced networking technologies to our clients. The Emulex team knows how to deliver the networking value that large data centers demand, and we look forward to continuing our work together.”

“With the inherent openness, flexibility and QoS benefits of OpenStack, innovation and deployment of private and public cloud infrastructure has accelerated at a tremendous pace. We are pleased that Emulex will be using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform with ExpressConfig Solutions and plans to leverage the Red Hat certification process to save time, reduce complexity and provide greater confidence for customers for open hybrid cloud deployments,” said Mike Werner, senior director, global technology partner ecosystems, Red Hat. “We look forward to continued collaboration with Emulex as part of the Red Hat OpenStack global partner ecosystem.”