The ECA encompasses five fundamental capabilities.

• Connectivity for cloud and virtual data centers: The ECA is designed to meet the network services and management requirements for cloud and virtual data centers.
  
  
• Virtual network services and management: Virtual network services implies support of new and evolving virtual I/O standards, including: Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), Virtual Ethernet Bridge (VEB) and Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA).
  
  
• Flexible multi-fabric protocol engines: Convergence is a key technology for Emulex, because the ability to consolidate storage and network traffic over a single 10 Gigabit/sec Ethernet (10GbE) wire over time will be one of the fundamental deployment models of the future. Convergence lowers capital expenses (CAPEX) and operational expenses (OPEX), by saving money on adapters, switches, power and cooling.
  
  However, the reality is that not all data centers are the same. The most common model today is the use of a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN) for storage traffic and Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) for network traffic. The ECA also includes a third model of convergence, the multi-fabric model, where both Ethernet and Fibre Channel are supported in the same name network device.
  
  
• Scalable performance and virtual devices: With the maturity of virtualization and the ever-increasing scalability of server technology, the ECA provides a high degree of scalability, enabling not only eight or 32 virtual devices on an individual card, but I/O connectivity surpassing 250 virtual devices.
  
  
• Emulex enterprise-class reliability: Enterprise-class reliability goes hand-in-hand with a highly virtualized deployment model for industrial-strength dependability and security.
  
  The ECA goes beyond standard Error Correcting Code (ECC) and parity to new data integrity features, such as support of the T10-PI standard. Emulex BlockGuard ™ technology ensures the integrity of user data as it is transferred from the application throughout the SAN, eliminating silent data corruption, which can happen when applications read from or write to storage devices.
  
  Additionally, the ECA incorporates advanced security features with the OneSecure™ encryption-offload. OneSecure provides a powerful, low-cost solution for host-based encryption that protects data in-flight and at-rest. This host-based encryption model works well in virtualized and multi-tenant cloud implementations.