Emulex, QLogic announce 8Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel hardware

Computerworld - QLogic Corp. this week announced the availability of its 8Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel switch and its companion 8Gbit/sec. host bus adapter (HBA). QLogic's announcement followed one by Emulex Corp. last week, which released its LightPulse LPe12000 family of 8Gbit/sec. HBAs.

Both vendors' products offer twice the performance of today's 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel technology, providing greater I/O scalability in support of an increase in the number of applications running on virtualized servers.

The companies are touting the new products' ability to consolidate applications onto fewer physical servers and thereby increasing the benefits of server virtualization, such as reduced procurement and management costs, as well as lower power and cooling costs.

Rick Villars, an analyst at research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., said because 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel HBAs, switches and arrays have been around for four years, "2008 is the logical time to begin the transition to the next generation of 8Gbit/sec. FC."

Frank Berry, vice president of marketing at QLogic, admitted that while most shops won't be implementing 8Gbit/sec. on their current servers/storage infrastructure, new multicore, multiprocessor and bladed servers will drive 8Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel adoption. Virtualization, or the pooling of server and storage resources behind a layer of abstraction, will also require the higher throughput capabilities of 8Gbit/sec. technology, Berry said. "With IBM and HP putting two quad-core [chips] in single blade servers, that of course will support a lot of VMs. So now you have to get that I/O out of the blade chassis," he said.

Berry said QLogic's new 8Gbit/sec. products tout a number of green features, including the ability to power down when not being used, to detect the type of PCI bus being used and to adjust power consumption to it. For example, a first-generation PCI Express bus card has eight I/O lanes, while a second-generation PCI Express bus has four lanes, so the HBA is able to "shut down the other four for energy efficiency."

Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing at Emulex, said his company's customers are also focused on consolidation through virtualization, "as well as leveraging multicore and bladed servers."

Hewlett-Packard Co. is also reselling QLogic's switches and HBAs. It also includes them as part of its HP StorageWorks 8Gb Simple SAN Connection Kit that has one switch, four HBAs, 8Gbit/sec. SFP+ optics and cables. The new Simple SAN Connection Kit sells for $8,199 retail. Neither QLogic nor Emulex included prices for their new products. QLogic said it would charge a "nominal" premium over its 4Gbit/sec. HBAs for the new models.

According to QLogic, the top 10 reasons 8Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel is needed are:

• 10. Web 2
• 9. Microsoft Windows Server 2008
• 8. PCI-Express Gen 2
• 7. Green IT
• 6. Business Continuity
• 5. Disaster Recovery
• 4. Microsoft Exchange
• 3. Oracle 11g
• 2. Server Consolidation
• 1. Virtualization

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