NetApp Certifies Emulex CNAs with First Native FCoE SAN Storage Solution

FCoE Leaders Collaborate to Further Adoption of a Unified Storage Architecture across the Data Center

Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced that its LightPulse® LP21000 family of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) have been certified for use with NetApp’s newly announced native FCoE and Fibre Channel SAN storage solutions. By certifying Emulex CNAs with its new native FCoE SAN storage solution, NetApp is enabling customers to further consolidate their data centers over time by converging Fibre Channel and networking traffic over a 10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet network, resulting in more streamlined IT operations and higher staff productivity.

“Emulex and NetApp have been active leaders in the development and ecosystem coordination of the FCoE standard, and today’s news marks an important milestone in the production-ready availability and adoption of FCoE-based solutions,” said Taufik Ma, vice president of product marketing, Emulex Corporation. “Emulex CNAs combined with NetApp’s unified storage architecture provide customers with the freedom of choice to utilize Fibre Channel, FCoE or iSCSI and NAS storage as they migrate to a next-generation converged network environment.”

The Emulex LP21000 family of CNAs leverages field-proven Fibre Channel SAN technology, allowing companies to extend their existing investments in infrastructure, management, training and processes. Emulex LightPulse CNAs minimize data center complexity and provide the same reliability, performance and manageability characteristics as Emulex’s enterprise-proven Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). Emulex LightPulse adapters leverage a common driver model and the familiar Emulex HBAnyware® management suite. Emulex CNAs enable lower operational costs by reducing the number of cards inside servers, network ports and cables by at least 50 percent.

“NetApp is working with Emulex in driving server virtualization adoption and helping customers migrate to a unified data center fabric,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing, NetApp. “FCoE support is a logical progression of NetApp’s unique unified storage architecture, and focus on Ethernet storage solutions. As more customers implement virtual server environments, FCoE will deliver increased efficiency and cost savings, while protecting existing SAN investments.”

Emulex CNAs also support Emulex’s Virtual HBA technology with industry-standard N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), allowing customers to “virtualize” SAN connections so that each virtual machine has independent access to its own protected storage. With NPIV, customers have the ability to track and chargeback storage utilization at the virtual machine level using Emulex’s HBAnyware management suite. For more information on Emulex LightPulse CNAs, visit: http://www.emulex.com/products/fcoe/index.jsp.