Posted August 31st, 2010 by Kevin Murray
I recently learned a great lesson: even when you think you are doing everything right, it is still very easy to fail.
We recently helped IBM with a long-time customer who was in process of transitioning to the latest generation of IBM System x servers. The customer had just received a new IBM System x3850 X5 and was surprised to find that it included a blue I/O adapter. They hadn’t ordered any I/O options, so they were a bit confused as to how the card ended up in their server, and why it was blue. Don’t get me wrong: in the grand scheme of things, this was a good problem to have. I would much rather have a customer receive our product and ask what it is than never know about it and not buy the right server as a result. The thing that keeps me up at night is the customers who could be getting a lot of benefit from our products but don’t know about the great technology we have available. (It is 5 a.m. as I type this. I am not an early riser.)
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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Posted July 27th, 2010 by Kevin Murray
In my last entry, I talked about how we’ve been busting the myth of 10G infrastructures with the use of virtual network interface (vNIC) technology in IBM Virtual Fabric. Now I would like to talk about the second unique feature of Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapters (VFAs) that is turning 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) infrastructures into essential tools of high-performance data centers. The second unique feature is the ability to upgrade the VFA to support a combination of vNIC with storage protocols. In other words, the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter can support all I/O needs that the server has.
It is this concept that turns 10GbE infrastructures from nice to have to essential for today’s data centers. This is a single adapter that can support all networking and storage traffic and do it in a way that is flexible to the needs of the administrators of each system. The ability to converge onto a single I/O infrastructure provides the capability to reduce costs, reduce complexity and improve performance. Is there anyone out there who does not want to get better performance in a simpler configuration at lower cost?
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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Posted June 4th, 2010 by Kevin Murray
By Kevin Murray, Senior Marketing Manager, Emulex
One of the greatest facets of our partnership with IBM is that both Emulex and IBM love to develop new technologies that change paradigms in IT. We love to bust myths. This has never been more evident than today. Think of x86 server I/O and a common perception comes to mind. Most people believe that x86 servers, despite becoming ever more powerful, are still a commodity that will never fully tax the I/O capabilities of the server. The easiest thing to do, most people believe, is to add another 1GbE adapter to the system when needed and maintain the status quo. This is exactly the type of myth that a partnership between Emulex and IBM challenged with the launch this year of IBM’s new eX5 servers with Virtual Fabric.
We busted this myth last week in San Francisco at a fantastic eX5 launch event with special guests Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, stars of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters. Jamie and Adam have proven their ability to solve hundreds of urban legends and other commonly held beliefs, but in this case we were lucky to have them just for entertainment purposes; and they did not disappoint. But the real myth busting that day was being done by Emulex and IBM. Continue reading…
Posted in FCoE | No Comments
Posted November 10th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
One of the key elements of Emulex’s approach to this whole convergence solution is the whole point of calling it a converged network is to actually bring the same functions you had before to the table. It’s not much of a convergence if you use an ethernet cable to run your fibre channel protocol over it and do nothing else. You need to supply the same features you’ve enjoyed from your previous generation of NIC functionality and FC functionality, you’re just using a new physical layer.
At least, that’s what I thought. Then I started having people react to our solution and tell me how ‘nice’ it is we actually did something as simple as NIC Teaming. So I wanted to list out the functionality we offer on our 10Gb NIC part of the solution.
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Tags: 10GbE, convergence, FCoE
Posted in 10G Ethernet, Competitive | No Comments
Posted November 2nd, 2009 by Tom Boucher
As an avid technologist I try my best to keep up with ‘the industry’. I do this by monitoring and participating (when I have time) with conversations on Twitter, following some of the best storage-related blogs on the web (Hat Tip: Scott Lowe) and in general just being a nosy person following links wherever they’ll lead me.
So back in June, QLogic asked a question about whether or not they thought encryption of data at the Fibre Channel adapter level was necessary. What interested me most about this was how they said you should buy something they don’t make in order to get the best deal. It seems counterintuitive to me for a company who makes storage networking products to say ‘this sucks, go buy it from someone else’.
Even stranger to me was that this technology they recommended wasn’t deemed ‘good enough’ by a number of customers I have met and talked about security options with storage area networks. Continue reading…
Tags: encryption, FC, Fibre Channel, Security
Posted in Competitive, FC, Security | No Comments
Posted October 28th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
I have been extremely busy of late making sure the last few weeks of integration testing are complete and any bugs we can find are stamped out, and I’ve been unable to keep up at least a weekly cadence this month, so I thought I would blast out some commentary on a number of things that have happened here in one big consolidated post.
It appears that the appropriate sacrifices were made to the gods of computer shows and our demonstration of the eVFA adapter on the IBM BladeCenter at Storage Networking World: Europe.
Unfortunately, due to my need to be in the States to help finish up our final testing before general availability, I was unable to attend in person. Instead, I helped walk the team over the phone through enabling the adapter & getting VMware up and running.
I’ve been following vicariously through people that have gotten updates and posted their thoughts. One author, Nigel Poulton, was lucky enough to gain some nice pictures of the HS22 with the eVFA card installed in his write-up, and he touches on something I wanted to expand on a little bit in this quote:
NOTE: Of particular interest to me was the fact that the core features, as well as the base cost, of this adapter are 10Gbps Ethernet. This is very interesting when you consider Emulex are traditionally a Fibre Channel company. Clearly Emulex are moving with the market here and recognising Ethernet as the dominant technology and building on that. Emulex also have people on IEEE 802.1 committees such as DCB. Now that’s what I call not betting against Ethernet.
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Tags: 10GbE, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, VFA
Posted in 10G Ethernet, FCoE, vNIC | No Comments
Posted September 28th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
Last week, I talked about the main hardware features of our eVFA adapter. This week I wanted to talk about the primary feature of the card above the dual 10Gb ethernet ports, which we have been calling vNIC.
vNIC is a feature of the adapter to present multiple adapters to the operating system through the PCI Function ID of the adapter. When an operating system scans the adapter and the vNIC function is enabled through the UEFI BIOS (which is on by default) the operating system will see up to eight PCI function IDs with eight unique MAC addresses. The PCI Functions are numbered 0 – 7 and are always enumerated with functions 0,2,4,6 being assigned to Port 0 as VNIC 1 – 4, and then 1,3,5,7 being assigned to Port 1 as VNIC 1-4.
In the initial launch, you will have some basic configuration options at the card level. However, primarily you will be configuring your vNIC solution from the switch as the switch controls the virtual groups and the bandwidth assigned to each virtual NIC. The switch in this solution is provided to IBM by Blade Network Technologies. It’s their BNT 10-Port 10Gb Ethernet Switch Module. They have some detailed information similar to our pages on the IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution along with a solution brief.
The BNT switch also provides 1Gb or 10Gb connections just like the eVFA adapter does. Giving you the ability to start with 1Gb network and grow into 10Gb. You could easily provide 10Gb of bandwidth to the blades and between your IBM BladeCenters and still connect to the corporate network at 1Gb.
We will be working on a IBM Redbook that will be available when the solution ships later in October. If you have any scenarios you’d like to see discussed in the RedBook feel free to give me some ideas either here or you can e-mail me as always.
Posted in 10G Ethernet | No Comments
Posted September 20th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
IBM and Emulex have announced the IBM BladeCenter Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter recently and I promised I’d start picking apart the features every week so that you can get an idea of what this adapter and the total BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution can do.
I wanted to start at the easy side, and work my way into the more complex features. So the easiest side of this is that at it’s core, the eVFA (my short name for this) is the base function of the adapter. At it’s core, this adapter is a two port 10Gb Ethernet adapter with full offload functionality. So let’s take a look at that function first.
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Posted in 10G Ethernet | 1 Comment
Posted September 4th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
If you spent any time on the Solutions Exchange floor this week at VMworld 2009 there was one thing that was pretty clear. The Cloud has come.
What is a Cloud? It’s Cloud Computing that a lot of vendors have jumped onto whole heartedly, and with good reason, as this is where a lot of growth potential can come from.
But for the nerds on the ground, what makes cloud computing any different from a hardware perspective than the computing we’ve been doing for the last ten years, or longer?
In my sarcastic ‘been there done that’ view of the world, I say not a whole lot. Continue reading…
Posted in FC, FCoE, Hardware Management | No Comments
Posted August 27th, 2009 by Tom Boucher
There is a reason I sit on an exercise ball while I’m in my home office. Some of it is because it’s supposed to give you better posture and keep you working your legs to keep yourself balanced, the other is I’ve been hopping up and down with excitement for a new product we’ve announced today in conjunction with IBM and Blade Network Technologies.
IBM today announced the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter for IBM BladeCenter. This adapter in conjunction with the Blade Network Technologies 10-port 10G Ethernet Switch Module introduces IBM BladeCenter’s new Virtual Fabric Architecture. The eVFA Adapter is based on Emulex’s OneConnect family of Universal Converged Network Adapters (uCNA)
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Posted in 10G Ethernet | No Comments