Brocade, QLogic, NetApp offer new virtualization-aware technologies

VMworld is the venue where new virtualization-aware products will be shown.

Developments of the week in storage

At VMworld in San Francisco this week, Brocade, QLogic and NetApp were among the vendors touting new virtualization-aware products and technologies.

Brocade announced visibility into virtual machines as enhancements to its SANs. The company introduced release 10.3 of its DCFM SAN management application, which now provides visibility of virtual machines on Brocade fabrics, allowing SAN administrators to view virtual machine properties from the server to storage through Brocade host bus adapters and switches. It does not support host bus adapters from other vendors. 

This is significant in that only a small part of the company's installed base is using Brocade host bus adapters or network interface cards. The new release of DCFM supports a management "plug-in" for VMware vCenter that, when installed and activated, will supply key metrics and alerts through VMware vSphere. 

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At VMworld in San Francisco this week, Brocade, QLogic and NetApp were among the vendors touting new virtualization-aware products and technologies.

Brocade announced visibility into virtual machines as enhancements to its SANs. The company introduced release 10.3 of its DCFM SAN management application, which now provides visibility of virtual machines on Brocade fabrics, allowing SAN administrators to view virtual machine properties from the server to storage through Brocade host bus adapters and switches. It does not support host bus adapters from other vendors. 

This is significant in that only a small part of the company's installed base is using Brocade host bus adapters or network interface cards. The new release of DCFM supports a management "plug-in" for VMware vCenter that, when installed and activated, will supply key metrics and alerts through VMware vSphere. 

The company is also announcing what it calls Server Application Optimization (SAO) for its Fibre Channel adapters and switches. SAO is a VM-aware network functionality compatible with existing Brocade Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBA) and switches that includes the ability to extend SAN network services to virtual machines (VM) by introducing the concept of "applicationaware" Quality of Service (QoS).

In addition, QLogic is announcing that its single-chip Fibre Channel over Ethernet Converged Network Adapters are now qualified for use in Symmetrix V-Max, DMX, CLARiiON CX4 and Celerra NS storage systems and through the EMC Select program.

Finally, NetApp announced on Tuesday that it would offer $1 million in NetApp hardware, software and services to a company that is deploying virtualization. The company's $1 Million Virtualization Challenge will be awarded to a customer that has not used NetApp's hardware or software before but can show that they will gain storage efficiencies through the use of NetApp gea and server virtualization. A third-party analysis firm will do pre- and post-assessments of the customer's deployment. 

To enter the challenge, the customer must be incorporated in the United States and submit their applications by Sept. 21. If interested, go here.

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.