NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that it has expanded its Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCOE) and Data Centre Bridging (DCB) product offerings with help from solution partners Brocade, Emulex, and VMware. NetApp customers now have even more options to build complete end-to-end FCOE infrastructures and unify their Ethernet and fibre channel architectures.
NetApp, a pioneer and leader in Ethernet storage, continues to advance the technology by expanding its product portfolio with support from its solution partners.
As part of this expansion, NetApp will begin reselling a new Converged Network Adapter (CNA) from Emulex, and is among the first storage vendors to support VMware vSphere 4 in an FCOE host environment. NetApp has also augmented its FCOE portfolio from Brocade. In addition to offering Brocade's CNAs, FCOE blade for the DCX, and the top-of-rack 8000 FCOE switch, NetApp is now introducing a DCB-only version of the Brocade 8000.
With NetApp and its solutions partners, customers can build end-to-end FCOE infrastructures while still supporting existing fibre channel investments and take a phased approach to consolidating their data centres around Ethernet. By using Emulex OneConnect UCNAs, customers can run both FCOE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need for and expense of separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables. Emulex OneConnect UCNAs provide maximum performance, regardless of the mix of network traffic, and outperformed other vendors' CNAs in recent testing by IT Brand Pulse. Now customers can build out their Ethernet infrastructure over time while maintaining maximum performance and protecting previous infrastructure investments.
“NetApp's philosophy and strength has always been to offer a unified, multiprotocol storage portfolio that gives customers the benefit of both efficiency and performance,” said Mike Styer, country manager NetApp South Africa. “By working closely with our solutions partners like Brocade, Emulex, and VMware to push the envelope of what's possible with Ethernet storage, we're able to offer customers more options than ever before to help them simplify and unify their infrastructure and achieve business breakthroughs.”
The foundation technology of FCOE is 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). As a pioneer and leader in 10GbE storage, NetApp has shipped nearly 14 000 10GbE ports since first offering them in 2006 and, as the technology bloomed, has seen an 85% increase over the last seven months. As customers look to consolidate data centre resources, they can increase value and efficiency by sharing the bandwidth of a high-performance 10GbE network infrastructure. The increased bandwidth and added enhancements to support FCOE make 10GbE the ideal interconnect for modern data centres.
For more information about NetApp Ethernet storage solutions, visit http://www.netapp.com/us/company/leadership/ethernet-storage/.
To read the recent evaluation of NetApp unified Ethernet storage, visit: http://media.netapp.com/documents/rp-unified-networking-evaluation.pdf.
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