QLogic stacks up design wins with Oracle's servers and storage

Underscores QLogic's commitment to converged networks and Fibre Channel connectivity

Storage Alert By Deni Connor, Network World
July 28, 2010 12:05 AM ET

Developments of the week in storage

QLogic's converged network adapters have stacked up another design win with the selection by Oracle for their exclusive use in the company's Oracle SPARC-based and x64 servers.

QLogic flexes the Bullet, an ASIC for network convergence

Specifically, QLogic's single-chip 8100 Series CNAs will be used in Oracle SPARC M Series enterprise, Oracle SPARC T Series entry and mid-range and Oracle x64 (x86-64) platform servers, where they will speed I/O performance and provide connectivity to Fibre Channel, Ethernet and iSCSI fabrics.

The QLogic 8100 Series CNAs will reduce power and cooling costs and provide higher levels of density when integrated with Oracle server platforms. Further, they reduce equipment and cabling by as much as 50% and reduce management expense and total cost of ownership. Branded by Oracle as Oracle Storage 10GE FCoE PCIe Converged Network Adapters, they provide full offload for FCoE and are compatible with the Solaris operating environment, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM. They also further Oracle's end-to-end stack approach to data center virtualization from the application, to server and network through to storage.

Related Content

The dual-port Oracle Storage 10GE FCoE PCIe Converged Network Adapters use the same QLogic 8Gb Fibre Channel stack that Sun server customers have used in the past. These heat sink-less adapters consume much less power than existing CNA chip sets. Based on QLogic's Network Plus Architecture and available in multiple form factors, including standard and mezzanine cards, the cards support 10Gb Enhanced Ethernet connectivity and an almost unlimited number of virtual machines.

In addition, QLogic announced that Oracle has selected its 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters exclusively for the Sun Storage 7000 Series system, an enterprise-class array also known as Amber Road. The QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters are integrated into Oracle's product stack, where they provide connectivity to storage for resource-intensive applications and virtual data center environments.

The Sun Storage 7000 family of storage arrays uses the Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target or COMSTAR framework, an OpenSolaris project, that converts an x86 or SPARC Solaris host so it can provide multi-protocol support that can be accessed by Solaris, Windows, Linux or VMware host initiators. allowing high performance and a low cost of ownership. Used in combination with the QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel Adapters, COMSTAR provides extensive LUN masking and multipathing support, as well as multiple parallel transfers per SCSI command.

Further, the QLogic 2500 Series is a family second-generation of 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCIe adapters designed for multi-processor, multi-core servers. With backward compatibility to 4Gb networks and previous PCIe host bus speeds, the adapters make use of Dynamic Power Management and Cool HBA technologies, which allow it to sense the type of PCI Express bus that is present and consume only the amount of power necessary to run at full speed. QLogic Cool HBA technology allows adapters to run without any air flow, unlike competitive products which require fans to be cool.

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