Emulex Converges IP, Storage Networking With New Adapters

Emulex this week expanded its storage connectivity line with a new converged network adapter aimed at lowering the cost of deploying data center technologies.

Emulex's new OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapter offers single-cable connectivity with enhanced Ethernet protocols that support both IP and storage networking, including TCP/IP, iSCSI, NAS, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet, or FCoE, said Shawn Walsh, vice president of corporate marketing at the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based storage vendor.

The new OneConnect platform includes the ability to off-load the processing needed for the different networking protocols from the CPU to help decrease the demand for CPU resources while increasing network performance, Walsh said.

A single connectivity solution for multiple networking needs is important as customers continue to implement more complex technologies while trying to simplify their data center infrastructure, Walsh said.

"Budgets are getting cut, and resellers are pitching new technologies to cut costs," he said. "But as they sell virtualization into new accounts, they are putting multiple virtual machines in a server and ending up with a bottleneck at the network."

Consolidation is also an issue, Walsh said. "Why should a server have a pair of Ethernet cards, a pair of Fibre Channel cards and a pair of InfiniBand cards?" he said. "By consolidating with a converged network adapter, resellers have a new story to take to customers. The storage and server worlds have been pretty aggressive with consolidation, but the networking world has been slower. But with this UCNA and new switches like the Cisco Nexus 5000, they can start to consolidate all three."

The company also unveiled a new Fibre Channel host bus adapter with encryption capabilities and key management technology from RSA.

The new Emulex SecureConnect Encryption HBA supports RSA's Key Manager for the Data Center in order to store, distribute and manage encryption keys in a centralized location and provide mandatory auditing and report capabilities, Walsh said.

The Emulex SecureConnect Encryption HBA improves the security of data by encrypting the data at the host-level and the virtual machine-level, and supports technologies like VMware's VMotion so that encryption schemes follow a virtual server as it moves from host server to host server, Walsh said.

While Emulex initially supports RSA key management with the HBA, it also plans to write APIs to let other key management schemes interface with it.

Also new is the Emulex OneCommand management framework which enables centralized management of I/O services, connectivity, virtualization, security and quality of service from a single management interface, Walsh said. It supports the new UCNA and SecureConnect Encryption HBA.

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