* Emulex announces its LightPulse Virtual HBA Technology
So when do server and storage technologies converge – when EMC acquired server virtualization vendor VMware or last week when Emulex announced a new host bus adapter technology that allows adapters placed in virtualized servers to support storage-area network management techniques such as zoning, logical unit networks mapping and LUN masking.
Emulex announced its LightPulse Virtual HBA Technology last week at Storage Networking World in Orlando. The technology makes use of the N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) industry standard. LightPulse is expected to be available in mid-2006.
At present, virtualized servers share the same storage resources. With NPIV, each virtualized server can access storage of its own.
Virtual HBA technology enforces SAN resource access rights on a virtual machine basis. Zoning enforces storage access restrictions and ensures that only authorized individuals can retrieve data stored on the SAN. NPIV lets applications, operating systems and settings be migrated between virtual machines while maintaining their access to SAN-based data.
NPIV lets a Fibre Channel port on a switch appear as multiple ports and provides port identification and security in the Fibre Channel fabric for each operating system image on a virtual machine. It allows an HBA to perform multiple logins to the Fibre Channel fabric from a single Fibre Channel port. Each operating system image is separately identified and managed just as if the operating system had its own unique SAN connection.
NPIV is implemented in HBA firmware and drivers and is shipping in IBM’s System z9 mainframe server.
Among other vendors that support NPIV are Brocade, McData, QLogic and Cisco.
