10Gbit Ethernet heats up

QLogic ties in LAN technology with network storage.

Developments of the week in storage

You might ask what 10Gigabit Ethernet has to do with storage. There's an obvious connection now with storage vendor QLogic getting into the game.

QLogic this week officially launched the 10Gbit Ethernet adapters it had acquired from NetXen in April.

These adapters, which QLogic calls Intelligent Ethernet adapters are differentiate from so-called 'dumb' Ethernet adapters that only handle a single protocol (Ethernet) and don't perform any TCP offload processing.

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You might ask what 10Gigabit Ethernet has to do with storage. There's an obvious connection now with storage vendor QLogic getting into the game.

QLogic this week officially launched the 10Gbit Ethernet adapters it had acquired from NetXen in April.

These adapters, which QLogic calls Intelligent Ethernet adapters are differentiate from so-called 'dumb' Ethernet adapters that only handle a single protocol (Ethernet) and don't perform any TCP offload processing.

In contrast, the 10G Ethernet adapters QLogic provides handle multiple protocols (Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet and iSCSI) and also perform protocol offloads, which reduce CPU utilization.

Specifically QLogic is offering four 10Gbit Ethernet adapters – the QLE3044 with four 1Gbit Ethernet 1000Base-T ports; the QLE3044 with four line rate 1Gbit Ethernet adapter with a PCIe 2.0 interface; the QLE8142 with two 10Git Ethernet SFP+ interfaces; and, the QLE3142 with two full duplex 10Gbit Ethernet ports and a PCIe interface.

The QLE3142 supports TCP, UDP and IP checksum offloads and large send offloads as well as Receive Side Scaling and Large Receive Offloads. It also supports Jumbo Frames. Similarly the QLE3044 supports the same features. Both adapters also allow PXE or iSCSI boot capability and have drivers for Windows, Linux, Solaris, VMware and XenServer.

In entering the Ethernet market, QLogic is able to complete its data center connectivity package. The company offers Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, Fibre Channel over Ethernet Converged Network Adapters, iSCSI adapters and InfiniBand adapters.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.