* Brocade to offer Fibre Channel and iSCSI host bus adapters
Brocade made a good move last week by announcing that it will offer Fibre Channel and iSCSI host bus adapters, along with its storage area networking Fibre Channel switches and software products.
The company will introduce a 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBA and an iSCSI HBA in the next three months. The expansion of Brocade’s product line is good for the industry, long dominated by two vendors – Emulex and QLogic. It may mean that pricing for HBAs will be more competitive and that users will be able to buy all their SAN gear from one vendor.
The products will be based on technology from LSI Logic and its acquisition of Silverback Systems in January. Single and dual-port Fibre Channel HBAs come about from a partnership with LSI; the iSCSI technology is thanks to Silverback.
In the next year, Brocade will also introduce 8Gbps Fibre Channel and 10Gbps Ethernet adapters.
The Brocade 2110 iSCSI Initiator HBA will work with Microsoft and Linux servers. Availability of the Brocade 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs are expected by July of this year.
The company’s iSCSI Initiator HBA is at present in testing at storage OEMs.
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