Emulex and Cisco - Delivering Virtualization

Optimized Solutions to the Enterprise Data Center

Enterprises face a number of difficult challenges as they strive to virtualize their data centers.  Emulex and Cisco have worked collaboratively on the next generation technology and products that facilitates the transformation of data center networks into a converged network infrastructure that improves operational efficiency and facilitates business agility. These key partnership initiatives enhance solutions such as VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure and vSphere, helping to reduce total cost of ownership, enhance business responsiveness,  deliver higher levels of operational continuity and protect existing infrastructure investments.

Emulex’s single-chip OneConnect™ Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) are being used by Cisco for 10Gb/s Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for the Cisco Unified Computing B-Series Blade Server platform, Cisco Unified Computing C-Series Rack Mount Server platform and qualified for use with the Nexus family of Unified Fabric Switches. Emulex FCoE connectivity is enhancing the Cisco Unified Fabric and Unified Computing Solutions by reducing network complexity, installation and maintenance costs, while optimizing performance by delivering full hardware offload protocol support for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and FCoE. Emulex LightPulse® Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are also available for use with the Cisco Unified Computing C-Series Rack Servers.

Emulex and Cisco’s collaborative work on the UCS platform and FCoE technology is an extension of the long-standing development partnership between the two companies.  VMware customers using traditional Fibre Channel technology have benefitted from this partnership through joint development, testing, and deployment of solutions such as N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV).  NPIV allows each virtual machine (VM) to have its own unique identity on the Storage Area Network (SAN), enabling application of SAN best practices such as zoning, LUN masking, storage chargeback, backup and quality of service (QoS) management.  These features are maintained even if the VM migrates from one physical host to another, eliminating the need for complex, time-consuming SAN reconfigurations.

Cisco and Emulex share a common vision of helping customers transition into next-generation data centers using virtualization technologies, and improving return on investment by leveraging existing Ethernet and Fibre Channel investments. The Unified Computing and converged network solutions, which complement server virtualization technologies, demonstrate the latest results of this vision.