Emulex Introduces Gen 5 Fibre Channel Flash Services for Virtualized Environments and Database Applications
New Emulex ExpressLane QoS and CrossLink In-band Message Passing Features Optimize I/O Performance in Fabric-based Flash Arrays and Server-based Cache Environments
FRANKFURT, Germany and COSTA MESA, Calif., Oct. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SNW EUROPE -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE: ELX), a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced new Gen 5 Fibre Channel (FC) Flash Services technology, which is designed to enhance the quality of service (QoS), optimize I/O performance and increase return on investment (ROI) in IT environments using fabric-based flash arrays and server-based cache. Emulex Gen 5 FC Flash Services technology is built on existing FC industry standards, eliminating vendor lock-in, and includes exclusive ExpressLane™ and CrossLink™ features, which provide priority queuing and in-band FC message passing. Emulex Gen 5 FC Flash Services technology is available as a no charge upgrade to currently shipping Emulex Gen 5 FC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and doesn't require any additional hardware purchases.
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"Flash and cache technologies are driving tremendous opportunities to accelerate applications and maximize QoS for virtualized and cloud environments," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "We are enabling best-of-breed solutions with partners' and OEMs' flash and cache products by ensuring that Emulex FC and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) products provide the highest I/O operations per second (IOPS), lowest latency, in-band device-to-device message-passing and intelligent automation."
ExpressLane Feature
As flash storage is deployed into mixed storage environments or with hybrid storage arrays, the combination of data from rotating media and flash devices can cause congestion on the Storage Area Network (SAN), resulting in reduced performance and diminished ROI. Emulex ExpressLane gives high priority, mission-critical workloads more chances to transmit by tagging the associated Logical Unit Number (LUN), so that flash traffic receives precedence. Emulex ExpressLane technology offers:
- Improved Service Level Agreements (SLAs): ExpressLane technology delivers prioritized queuing by using prioritization flags to identify priority traffic to the fabric, resulting in consistent performance and improved SLAs for individual I/Os.
- Improved QoS: Public or hybrid cloud environments running mixed workloads can use ExpressLane to alleviate congestion, reduce latency and improve throughput, ensuring that key applications receive highest priority.
- Ease of Use and Management: The ExpressLane feature requires no changes to the existing Fibre Channel environment and is easily turned on and off using OneCommand® Manager.
CrossLink Feature
New flash-based infrastructures, especially caching solutions, require coordination between nodes. East-West traffic (servers communicating with servers) has increased significantly with the use of technology such as VMware vSphere® vMotion® cache migration, which requires constant coordination between server nodes. Current solutions (TCP/IP and UDP) suffer from connectivity issues between nodes, including latency issues, poor QoS, excessive host CPU utilization, and lack of coordination with other storage devices. Emulex CrossLink provides an in-band FC message passing solution that ensures storage device connectivity and delivers optimized performance using lossless, standards-based FC protocols. Emulex CrossLink technology offers:
- Increased Reliability: CrossLink technology leverages lossless FC, eliminating dropped packets and significantly reducing the number of points of failure by staying in-band FC.
- Improved Performance: The in-band message passing in CrossLink significantly reduces latency and increases CPU utilization compared with UDP/IP by leveraging FC.
- Reduced Operational Expenditures (OPEX): CrossLink technology reduces OPEX because it negates the need for two teams (storage administrators and network administrators) to jointly manage the environment.
"EMC has a unique, differentiated strategy leveraging flash technology across the entire storage infrastructure. By working with Emulex to deliver customers 16GFC we are helping address the new demands of the data center with flash technology," said Barry Ader, Vice President, Product Marketing and Management, Server Storage Software, Emerging Technology Products Group, EMC Corporation. "Through this collaboration, EMC and Emulex are providing solutions that maximize application performance by reducing latency."
"As businesses turn to virtualization and the cloud to deliver flexibility, reliability and efficiency, Fusion ioMemory provides the low-latency performance needed to virtualize any application," said Ajay Nilaver, Fusion-io Vice President of Products. "Emulex's Gen 5 FC network optimization technologies for flash help our joint customers maximize server density and eliminate I/O bottlenecks even in data-intenstive virtual environments."
"Effective flash solutions are important for today's virtualized environments. Emulex's new Gen 5 FC Flash Services technology, along with VMware vSphere® 5.5 and the VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache™, enable end users to use a software-defined storage architecture in their data center to improve quality of service and lower latency for mission-critical applications," said Mike Adams, director, Cloud Infrastructure, VMware.
"Fibre Channel technology is still one of the best options for high-performance, rock-solid enterprise connectivity and the protocol continues to evolve to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprise environments," said George Crump, lead analyst, Storage Switzerland. "Emulex, a long-time Fibre Channel technology leader, has developed a flash agnostic solution for enabling flash QoS on best-of-breed solutions with partners and OEMs' in-house flash/cache products."
Emulex Gen 5 FC Flash Services technology will be included as part of OneCommand Manager for use with Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs and CFAs in the first quarter of 2014. Emulex will be showcasing this new technology in its Booth #12 this week at SNW Europe in Frankfurt, Germany.
For more information on Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs and CFAs, click here.
Read our Labs blog on today's news here.
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About Emulex
Emulex, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, provides hardware and software solutions for global networks that support enterprise, cloud, government and telecommunications. Emulex's products enable unrivaled end-to-end application visibility, optimization and acceleration. The Company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of ultra high-performance Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, have been designed into server and storage solutions from leading OEMs, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, and can be found in the data centers of nearly all of the Fortune 1000. Emulex's monitoring and management solutions, including its portfolio of network visibility and recording products, provide organizations with complete network performance management at speeds up to 100Gb Ethernet. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) please visit http://www.Emulex.com.
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"Safe Harbor'' Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above, contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or changes to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. We wish to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the possibility that we may not realize the anticipated benefits from the acquisition of Endace on a timely basis or at all, and may be unable to integrate the technology, operations and personnel of Endace into our existing operations in a timely and efficient manner. 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Such potential risks include continuing expenses of litigation, loss of patent rights, monetary damages, injunctions against the sale of products incorporating the technology in question, counterclaims, attorneys' fees, incremental costs associated with product or component redesigns, liabilities to customers under reimbursement agreements or contractual indemnification provisions, and diversion of management's attention from other business matters. With respect to the continuing Broadcom litigation, such potential risks also include the adequacy of any sunset period to make design changes, the ability to implement any design changes, the availability of customer resources to complete any re-qualification or re-testing that may be needed, the ability to maintain favorable working relationships with Emulex suppliers of serializer/deserializer (SerDes) modules, and the ability to obtain a settlement which does not put us at a competitive disadvantage. In addition, the fact that the economy generally, and the technology and storage market segments specifically, have been in a state of uncertainty makes it difficult to determine if past experience is a good guide to the future and makes it impossible to determine if markets will grow or shrink in the short term. Continued weakness in domestic and worldwide macro-economic conditions, related disruptions in world credit and equity markets, and the resulting economic uncertainty for our customers, as well as the storage and converged networking market as a whole, has and could continue to adversely affect our revenues and results of operations. As a result of these uncertainties, we are unable to predict our future results with any accuracy. Other factors affecting these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the following: faster than anticipated declines in the storage networking market, slower than expected growth of the converged networking market or the failure of our Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems; our dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make timely payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the timing and market acceptance of our products or our OEM customers' new or enhanced products; costs associated with entry into new areas of the network, server and storage technology markets; the variability in the level of our backlog and the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of our customers; any inadequacy of our intellectual property protection and the costs of actual or potential third-party claims of infringement and any related indemnity obligations or adverse judgments; the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire us; proxy contests or the activities of activist investors; impairment charges, including but not limited to goodwill and intangible assets; changes in tax rates or legislation; the effects of acquisitions; the effects of terrorist activities, natural disasters, and any resulting disruption in our supply chain or customer purchasing patterns or any other resulting economic or political instability; the highly competitive nature of the markets for our products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions; the effects of changes in our business model to separately charge for software; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; transitions from board or box level to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions for selected applications; a shift in unit product mix from higher-end to lower-end or mezzanine card products; a faster than anticipated decrease in the average unit selling prices or an increase in the manufactured cost of our products; delays in product development; our reliance on third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly; our ability to attract and retain key technical personnel; our ability to benefit from our research and development activities; our dependence on international sales and internationally produced products; changes in accounting standards; and any resulting regulatory changes on our business. These and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and are discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors."
VMware, vMotion vSphere, and vSphere Flash Read Cache are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.
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SOURCE Emulex Corporation
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