Emulex Blog: Emulex Channel Blog

5 Questions with…Tech Data

Posted June 14th, 2013 by Emulex

Today, we bring you a guest blog in our “5 Questions with…” series by Tim Orselli, senior manager, government and healthcare sales at Tech Data. Tim is responsible for ensuring the company achieves its strategic business goals and market-growth targets in the government and healthcare sectors. Prior to this position, he worked in various management roles from Technical Support to Product Marketing and Sales. He has been in the IT distribution channel for 22 years.

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Q. What do you do, and what technologies do you specialize in?

Tech Data is a broad line solution driven distributor. We specialize in working together with our customers to find and build solutions that solve end customers’ challenges in the commercial, government and healthcare IT verticals.

Q. Tell us how you are working with Emulex and about some of the joint solutions being taken to market?

Virtualization is the hottest technology out there and we are incorporating/recommending in our solutions the Emulex Gen 5 (formerly 16Gb Fibre Channel) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).  This solution saves our customers time and money.

Q. What is your best practice advice for customers as they deploy these solutions?

To keep Tech Data in their back pocket as a resource that can be relied upon through the entire sales cycle.

Q. What are the biggest deployment pain points for customers right now?

Timing and resources. We here at Tech Data can ensure that the complete solution will arrive on the date it is needed, have solid ETA, and will save the reseller time and money by not having engineers waiting for all the part to arrive. We can provide technical resources that will assist the reseller during deployment or do the complete deployment on behalf of the reseller. These services are able to be deployed across the U.S.

Q. What storage or networking technology are you most excited about coming to market in the next 12-18 months?

On storage, we look to solid state drives (SSDs) starting to gain ground as more and more people look to the cloud for applications and wanting faster access times to those applications. Also, we are looking into solutions around server side caching to improve database access speeds.

From a networking technologies aspect, we are keeping our eye on Software Defined Networking (SDN). SDN is still a young technology that needs to be proven, however, we are staying in tune with the latest SDN developments so we can act when the time is right.

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5 Questions with…Mainline Information Systems

Posted May 1st, 2013 by Emulex

Today, we are kicking off a new series on our Channel blog – 5 Questions with…key partners. Today’s guest post comes from Rick Nelson, director of network solutions at Mainline Information Systems. Rick joined Mainline Information Systems in 2007 to establish and grow a network consulting and integration business unit. With 30 years in the information technology industry, Rick guides the network practices at Mainline and has developed the business relationships with IBM, Cisco, Juniper, and other vendors and business partners to supply customers with the right products and solutions for their business.

Take it away, Rick!

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Q. What do you do, and what technologies do you specialize in?

Mainline is a solutions provider and value added reseller (VAR) of information technology components. Our focus is on the solution for our customers and not just technology for its own sake. We are focused on becoming the advisor to our clients to help them solve IT infrastructure and information availability issues with their business. Our goal is to be their most trusted advisor and a true partner with them as opposed to the model of a simple systems integrator with good pricing.

Q. Tell us how you are working with Emulex and about some of the joint solutions being taken to market?

Emulex is a key partner and customer of Mainline. Their laboratory team consults with us on a regular basis and we have helped them with some consultative studies over the last few years to assist them with analyzing the large network switches on the market.

We integrate converged networking products and interfaces provided by Emulex to deliver sophisticated server and storage solutions. As the industry migrates toward software defined networking, the role with integration and the use of convergence technologies will become very important to solutions providers like Mainline and to our customers.

Q. What is your best practice advice for customers as they deploy these solutions?

Our strengths have traditionally been in customer data centers and accessing information that drives their business. As newer technologies and the virtualization of all data center components become a reality, it will be more important than ever to have diverse high-speed routes to and from those platforms that hold information.

We encourage our customers, from the smallest to the largest, to use the virtualization products that fit their needs. It affords them the most redundancy at the lowest cost so that information is always available and that business recovery options are more reliable.

When virtualization and high-availability are built into their environments, it must be based on reliable technology that is flexible and doesn’t restrict access or movement of virtual devices. Building it into the design of systems prior to systems implementation ensures they will have the most robust environment for their applications.

Q. What are the biggest deployment pain points for customers right now?

Among the issues that cause customers the most anxiety are systems integration and interoperability. The network infrastructure in most IT environments is very complicated and usually involves multiple vendor platforms with nuances to each one that requires technical skill. The evolution of software defined networks will help ease the complexity by presenting a management system that takes some of the difficulty of having to know multiple systems out of the mix to allow for more speedy deployment of applications and their underlying platforms.

The cost of personnel and simply finding the right technical staff is also very demanding. Mainline helps in this regard by providing solutions that are streamlined and the supporting staff needed for our customers to help ease this pain point.

Q. What storage or networking technology are you most excited about coming to market in the next 12-18 months?

The advent of very high speed storage interfaces is going to allow for new and different types of storage environments that customers previously didn’t deploy either due to cost or efficiency. All of the network platform providers with whom we work have recently announced new and more robust network connectivity for storage. These network technologies are being “built-in” to product bundling strategies like those from IBM, HP and Cisco, and they are managed with a single management system.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) is a very new and exciting technology that is just beginning to emerge as a result of the move towards the Virtual Data Center. SDS is the abstraction of storage resources to enable pooling, replication and on-demand distribution. The result is a storage layer similar to that of virtualized compute: aggregated, flexible, and capable of elastic scale-out. In theory SDS provides the capability to pool storage arrays into logical pools (storage profiles) that can then be mapped to virtual data centers.

From VMware’s perspective, SDS is distributed storage, where internal server disks are pooled to create shared resources for virtual machines (VMs). This presumes an extremely reliable, fault tolerant, high-speed network layer between sever resources. Outside of the lab, this type of network does not yet exist at the level required to support a pure SDS architecture, but is being aggressively pursued by network infrastructure providers.

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Thank you to Mainline for collaborating with us on this guest blog. If you are a channel partner and would like to participate in a future ‘5 Questions’ guest post, comment here and we would love to connect with you.

More information on Mainline:

Mainline, headquartered in Tallahassee, FL, is an information technology solutions and IT consulting firm, and has more than 500 employees nationwide. Mainline has received many industry accolades, including VMware Global Desktop Virtualization Partner of the Year, Red Hat’s North America Partner of the Year, multiple IBM Leadership Awards and a HP Virtualization Elite partner designation. Mainline provides solutions throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and Brazil. The company may be reached by phone at 850.219.5000 and on the Internet at www.mainline.com.

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Ready for the latest generation of Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) for EMC Storage?

Posted April 4th, 2013 by Shawn Pattock

Wouldn’t it be great to always sell products that you didn’t have to push–ones that just sold themselves? That’s every salesman’s dream, right? With our next generation of Emulex EMC-qualified 16GFC adapters, you’re getting the best-in-breed HBAs on the market, and for your EMC customers, going with Emulex is a no-brainer!

EMC logoThe new Emulex EMC-qualified LightPulse® LPe16000B-E series offers PCIe 3.0 support, boasts more than 1.2 million IOPS on a single port (that’s 20 percent more than other 16GFC HBAs), and delivers lightning fast response times and 4x better IOPS performance per watt, making it the clear choice for the toughest virtualized, cloud and mission critical deployments.¹ Furthermore, Emulex LPe16000B-E series HBAs are the only HBAs to support T10 PI silent data corruption protection with hardware offload!

Additionally, the LPe16000B-E series accelerates EMC XtremSW Cache—a server-side flash software solution that reduces latency by intelligently caching the most common read requests—by accelerating the non-cached reads and writes on the storage side, making sure there are no transaction slow-downs anywhere in the processing chain — Period!

Remember, your customer’s storage area network (SAN) is only as good as its weakest link.

And right now has never been a better time to transition to 16GFC:

  1. As 16GFC storage arrays are released, you can provide a complete 16GFC end-to-end storage solution!
  2. When purchased with an EMC XtremSW Cache product, you can get EMC-qualified 16GFC HBAs at 8GFC prices, that’s up to $250 in savings per adapter! Imagine how much you can increase your bottom line or how much savings you can pass on to your customers.

Because all Emulex –E products have been 100 percent EMC-qualified and listed on the EMC Support Matrix, your customers will never need to worry about compatibility issues!

Find out more:

¹Demartek Emulex LPe16000B 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA Evaluation, October 2012

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Loyalty, Partners, Recognition and the Emulex Connect Partner Program…

Posted March 27th, 2013 by Shawn Pattock

Loyalty is a virtue and should be rewarded. Generally, in sales we always like to reward customers who buy from us. Human relationships, great deals and reliable products always keep customers coming back, right? At Emulex, we believe that loyalty should be amply rewarded. But it’s not just about the selling, rather about the commitment and faith that resellers have in us. They recommend and sell our products to their most important resource, their customers, knowing that they are selling the best I/O connectivity on the market to their customers!

Resellers may become loyal not only because of products we sell, but also because of our partner program and the way our commitments to them help drive business. In fact, CRN awarded the Emulex Connect™ Partner Program the coveted 5-Star award for best partner programs three years running! It’s a great honor, and shows our dedication to our resellers and their customers!

Closing on the topic of loyalty, we’ve added a new piece to our Connect Partner Program designed to reward those loyal to Emulex. For members of the Connect Partner Program who aren’t a Platinum or Gold member and have been purchasing Emulex or Emulex OEM-branded products consistently each quarter, they’re eligible for the new loyalty program. Not only do you get all of your original Connect benefits like deal registration, SPIFs, market development funds (MDFs), proof of concept/demo equipment, and training, administrative and sales tools, but additional Loyalty Program perks like:

  • Priority lead distribution
  • More demo/proof of concept equipment
  • Substantially increased MDF

If you think you’re eligible, thanks! That means you are selling Emulex! Email reseller@emulex.com for more details on the loyalty program or any aspect of the Connect Partner Program.

For more information:

• Read the press release

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Why EMC VFCache and Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel Technology Improves Enterprise Data Centers

Posted February 5th, 2013 by Shawn Pattock

Today more and more enterprise data centers are seeking out storage solutions to reduce overall latency and increase performance across the Storage Area Network (SAN).  Many resellers are turning to PCI Express (PCIe)  server-side flash-caching solutions, such as EMC® VFCache™, in conjunction with EMC-branded Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to provide the ultimate, high-performance SAN solution!

How can EMC VFCache and EMC-branded Emulex 16GFC HBAs improve your customers’ enterprise data centers?

EMC VFCache reduces latency and accelerates throughput to dramatically improve application performance using intelligent caching software and PCIe flash technology. In fact, compared to SATA Solid State Disk (SSD) cache solutions, VFCache provides more than 13X¹ more I/O operations per second (IOPS) than SATA SSDs.  Because VFCache works on the server-side, there is significantly less need for high bandwidth, however, non-cached reads and writes back to the SAN still benefit from the incredible throughput provided by the fastest HBA around.

Emulex 16GFC HBAs delivers a whopping 1.2 million IOPS² , reducing latency between the SAN. Even in an 8GFC ecosystem, your customer can get 5X IOPS and slash response times in half by using a 16GFC HBA.

Besides faster writes, why would my customers need 16GFC HBAs in VFCache deployments?

There are several reasons:

  1. VFCache, just like all other flash cache systems, requires a warm up optimization period. In many enterprise deployments, when servers are brought online or rebooted, intelligent cache optimization can take hours or even days. During these periods, high throughput and low latency are essential to keep data from bottlenecking between servers and SAN storage.
  2. Depending on server utilization, PCIe slot real estate can be quite valuable. With Emulex 16GFC HBAs, your customers’ can free up spots and replace the multitudes of 4 or 8GFC HBAs with fewer HBAs and lower energy consumption and overall heat in the data center.

Why buy EMC-branded Emulex 16GFC HBAs with EMC VFCache?

All EMC-branded Emulex HBAs have been qualified to run flawlessly on EMC storage and the time has never been better to purchase 16GFC HBAs for your customers’ new or pre-existing server deployments. For a limited time, you can get EMC-branded Emulex LightPulse® 16GFC HBAs at an 8Gb price!

Find out more:

¹ Whitepaper: Introduction to EMC VFCache, EMC, February, 2012.

² Product Brief: Emulex Targets High Performance Environments with LPe16000B, ESG, October, 2012.

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NetApp® Qualifies Emulex LightPulse® 16Gb Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters

Posted January 15th, 2013 by Shawn Pattock

Worried about interoperability issues when deploying Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) into NetApp’s FAS6200 series storage solutions? No need to fret! Emulex LPe1600x series HBAs are now NetApp-qualified, guaranteeing complete interoperability.
NetApp and Emulex
Emulex 16GFC HBAs can drastically improve FAS6200 series performance by:

  • Adding 5X the input/output operations per second (IOPS) at half the application response time of an 8GFC adapter¹
  • Cutting down on cabling costs and complexity
  • Reducing heat and freeing up PCIe slots

Emulex is also making it easy (and more profitable) for channel partners to bundle its 16GFC HBAs into NetApp storage solutions by offering 16GFC HBAs for the price of an 8GFC adapter. That’s up to nearly $200 dollars off single-port and $300 dollars off dual-port HBAs.

Call inside sales at 877-359-3263 or email insidesales@emulex.com to find out how Emulex LPe1600x series HBAs benefit 8GFC ecosystems.

Find out more information on Emulex 16GFC adapters for NetApp here:

¹ESG Lab Validation Report: Emulex LPe16000 Series 16GFC HBAs, February 2012

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When Technology Changes and Dollar Signs Collide

Posted October 8th, 2012 by Shawn Pattock

More Virtualization Means More I/O Bandwidth Requirements

There was a time when 4Gb Fibre Channel (4GFC) was always enough to get the job done, but with today’s most needed and I/O hungry applications, and the now-available powerful Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 server platform, sometimes even 8GFC may not be enough. Current trending shows that virtualization is rapidly expanding into production environments. According to ESG Research, the majority of network and storage administrators expect to be running 25 or more virtual machines (VMs) per host in less than two years.¹

Taking into account data center demands, new processors and increasing solid state disk (SSD) adoption, this summer’s release of VMware® vSphere® 5.1 — unlike the previous 5.0 release, which only offered 16GFC compatibility at 8GFC speeds — capitalizes on the 16GFC performance advantages. (Imagine having 1.2 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) at your disposal in a new backward-compatible PCIe 3.0 bus!)

The Bundling Effect

Now is the perfect time to create an optimized I/O solution for your customers by bundling Emulex LightPulse® 16GFC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) in your enterprise software application and server/array sales. By including the best I/O connectivity in your deployment shopping list, not only will you increase your overall revenue, but your customers will be able to take advantage of the amazing 16GFC performance increases, even if they don’t yet have a 16GFC switching infrastructure

Take Advantage of This Once in a Lifetime 16GFC HBA Incentive!!!

So now that you know when and why you should be selling Emulex 16GFC HBAs, Emulex makes it a no-brainer (and frankly, irresistible) to convert your customers from 8GFC to 16GFC HBAs with an amazing Q4 promo. In fact, it’s so good, we can’t even mention it in this newsletter!!!

Call Inside Sales NOW at 877-359-3263 or email insidesales@emulex.com to discuss the LPe16002/16002 and LPe16000B/16002B and mention LEAPOVER8. You won’t regret it!

¹ESG Solution Brief: Why I/O is Strategic – Virtualization, August 2012

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New Emulex LightPulse® 16Gb Fibre Channel HBAs Available for EMC to Meet Data Center Demands for Today and Beyond

Posted August 7th, 2012 by Shawn Pattock

There was a time when 4Gb Fibre Channel (4GFC) was always enough to get the job done, but with today’s most needed and I/O hungry applications, and the now-available powerful Intel® Xeon® E5 server platform, sometimes even 8GFC may not be enough. So if your customers are feeling an I/O bottleneck pinch, it’s time to think about 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC). Applications driving the migration to 16GFC are:

  • Heavy Virtualization – More and more data centers are beginning to run at least 25 virtual machines (VMs) per server
  • Large Databases and Data Warehousing – Large-scale high-frequency mission-critical Oracle and SLP applications demand extreme I/O bandwidth
  • Backup and Recovery – More storage means larger and more frequent backups. In addition, recovery times need to be as fast as possible. Using 16GFC can not only shortens the time windows required for backup and recover; but it improves the underlying data integrity
  • Private Cloud Deployments – Speed is everything with the cloud. As deployments become more robust, the demand for input/output operations per second (IOPS) and low latency are a necessity to avoid I/O bottlenecks and maintain customer Quality of Service (QoS).

You might ask, “Is 16GFC really available today?” The answer is an emphatic YES. 16GFC storage and switches are already shipping. Brocade’s for example, has stated that a full 23% of their FC switches shipping today are 16GFC switches.1 The applications and hardware are there for 16GFC deployment. It’s time to make the leap to 16GFC.

 

New! Emulex LightPulse®16GFC LPe16000 HBAs for EMC

When it comes to EMC rack server storage units, adding 16GFC HBAs are essential in keeping up with the current and future trends and demands of today’s modern data centers, and Emulex has great news! Today, we announced that Emulex LightPulse® 16GFC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are now available for EMC storage arrays. We’re excited that EMC customers can be guaranteed that their new Emulex 16GFC HBAs are completely compatible with all EMC storage products through the EMC Select program!

Coming from a company that owns 87% of the 16GFC HBA market share and offering the fastest 16GFC HBA, winning nearly every design win from top OEMs, Emulex can say for certain when you buy Emulex LightPulse 16GFC HBAs, you’re getting the best adapter in the world:

  • Offers “best-in-industry” fastest and most robust 16GFC HBA capable of more than 1 million IOPS2
  • vScale™ performance and scalability—multi-core ASIC engine with eight cores supports 255 VFs, 1024 MSi-X and 8192 logins/open exchanges for maximum VM density—up to 4x more than any other adapter on the market
  • GreenState™ power efficiency—reduces data center power consumption and associated OPEX by delivering exceptional power to port ratios
  • BlockGuard® exclusive end-to-end data integrity technology, preventing silent data corruption and costly system downtime
  • vEngine™ CPU offload—lowers CPU burden on host server, enabling support for more VMs
  • And more…

For EMC storage users that aren’t ready to adopt a complete 16GFC ecosystem, 16GFC HBAs are still a viable option that has benefits over 8GFC HBAs even when running at 8GFC. Emulex 16GFC HBAs will double the IOPS at half the latency in an 8GFC HBA ecosystem2. And believe it or not, customers can save money purchasing 16GFC HBAs, in fact up to 30% per HBA when you factor in lower cabling costs, reduction in HBAs required to meet bandwidth needs and they will even lower power consumption!

All in all, it’s a win-win. And as EMC OEM Product Manager at Emulex, I’m excited for our existing and new EMC customers to take advantage of the future of Fibre Channel technology

Find out More:

   

  1. Brocade figure from earnings transcript
  2. Based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing

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Why Join a Partner Program?

Posted June 25th, 2012 by Shawn Pattock

You’d be surprised at how many resellers who consistently sell Emulex products have not joined the Emulex Connect Partner Program. Why, might you ask? Many are simply unaware of the program. Others are already a member of ten to twelve programs from other vendors and simply don’t want to join another. And then some simply don’t want to bother going through what they think might be a cumbersome registration process. All of these people are missing out.

Why does anyone join any reseller program? They are looking for tools and programs that enable them to drive quality solutions to their partners. They are looking for communications and information that discuss the latest trends and illuminate revenue-generating sales opportunities. And finally, they are looking for ways to be more competitive and drive greater revenue. The Emulex Connect Partner Program, a 2012 CRN Five Star Partner Program winner, does all of this.

For a quick taste of what we have to offer, join our webcast and listen to Shawn Pattock, Channel Manager, Americas, and Barbara Porter, Sr. Product Manager, discuss how to maximize server refresh revenue opportunities with the Emulex Connect Partner Program and 8G Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). You can register for tomorrow’s webcast here, and if you can’t wait and want information on the Connect Partner Program right now, simply visit www.emulex.com/channel.

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Let Emulex show you how to turn the new Intel® Xeon® E5 server refresh into revenue

Posted March 13th, 2012 by Shawn Pattock

Last week, Intel announced the arrival of the new Xeon E5-2600 platform, also formerly known in the industry as Romley. As a leader in 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) and Fibre Channel networking, you can be assured that Emulex has been in lockstep with server vendors for months and stands ready to offer the broadest base platform support of any I/O provider—period!

We are aware of both the challenges the new Intel Xeon E5 severs will present for end users as well as the enormous revenue generating opportunities the server refresh will create for our channel partners. In order to help through the migration, Emulex has created a dedicated server refresh site, which will show you how to:

  • Stay ahead of the new wave of servers coming to market
  • Address the I/O requirements for next-generation server platforms
  • Take advantage of the new Emulex Connect Partner Program 2.0

The site will contain informative videos, white papers, data sheets, Xeon E5 specs and the chance to join the Emulex Connect Partner Program—one of the most feature rich, revenue generating partner programs in the I/O community.

To find out more about how Emulex can help you take advantage of Intel’s latest server refresh, call 800-368-5393 or email us at insidesales@emulex.com.

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