QLogic launches 3rd generation converged network adapters, flexes leadership position
By Deni Connor
Senior Analyst
Storage Strategies NOW
October 2010
QLogic’s recent launch of its third-generation converged network adapters, dubbed 3GCNA, is important in that it builds upon the company’s first place market share in 10GbE Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) CNAs and a second place finish behind market leader Intel for 10GbE NICs.
The 8200 Series 10GbE CNA, 3200 Series 10GbE Adapter and the 8200 Series converged LOM (cLOM) are based on the Network Plus Architecture single-chip technology that first made its appearance in the now field-proven 8100 Series CNAs , but add some innovative hardware and software capabilities that help customers realize requirements of the changing data center.
The 3GCNAs also address the shift taking place in the IT environment to a service-based model where IT resources are virtual and flexible and can be acquired on demand. The infrastructure of today must be efficient, agile and adaptable and be structured in a simple, autonomic, scalable and reliable fashion that is also cost-efficient. The convergence of networking, storage and server silos further exacerbates this shift and as companies start virtualizing their data centers, working with cloud service providers to meet their needs of developing IT as a service and converging their infrastructures, their need for adapters that match these provisions is mandatory. As QLogic’s OEMs begin further deploying their overarching strategies for data center flexibility—HP Converged Infrastructure, Oracle’s Red Stack and IBM’s On Demand—they are increasingly looking to QLogic to enable them to deliver the data center connectivity layer for virtualized, cloud environments.
QLogic’s 3GCNAs—Driving the Data Center Connectivity Layer
Enter QLogic’s 3GCNA, third-generation Converged Network Adapters (CNAs), NICs and cLOMs, which use a single-chip architecture, can run iSCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet and Ethernet concurrently and non-disruptively.
The 8200 Series 10GbE CNA, 3200 Series 10GbE Adapter and 8200 Series cLOM provide switch-agnostic virtual-machine to virtual-machine communication within physical machines, allowing high mobility of virtual machines. They are flexible in their deployment and are operating system (Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX and Solaris) and protocol-agnostic, supporting TCP/IP, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE at launch. Other protocols for the HPC sector can be supported based on OEMs’ specific requirements.
Further, the cLOMs can be deployed as quad 1GbE or dual 10GbE ports and support the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (replaces the BIOS interface between the OS and firmware), Open Firmware, Coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) and BIOS interfaces.
The ASIC design of the 3GCNAs also contributes to power savings. The new 8200 and 3200 Series adapters have a power dissipation of 15 watts and are more efficient than that of competing products which operate at 22 watts. Another advantage of the ASIC design is its small footprint – replacing spread out discrete components and circuitry — which leaves space on the adapter for future purposes or applications used in crowded, blade server or high-density storage environments.
QLogic has looked at ASIC design and called on its deep expertise, market dominance and several years of experience with iSCSI and Fibre Channel to design an ASIC that supports FCoE and Enhanced Ethernet, as well as FCoE, iSCSI and TCP/IP offload – and does it reliably in a lossless manner.
Adaptive Convergence
Further, the QLogic 3GCNAs ship with a number of next-generation software services grouped under the company’s new overarching Adaptive Convergence strategy: VMflex, ConvergeFlex, FlexOffload and SecureFlex. VMflex provides advanced virtualization services, while ConvergeFlex offers concurrent protocol processing and FlexOffload provides multiple protocol offload services. SecureFlex, the last service under Adaptive Convergence, provides data security services.
Specifically, VMflex allows IT managers to carve out multiple partitions and give virtualized applications dedicated I/O processing, as well as provide flexible bandwidth provisioning and QoS. It provides the ability to perform switch-agnostic virtual machine-to-virtual machine communication within the same physical machine. QLogic has cleverly embedded a Layer 2 switch in its new adapters to provide direct VM-to-VM communication capabilities, really streamlining data center network architectures. In addition, VMflex supports the:
• Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) and Virtual Ethernet Bridge (VEB), technologies that offload switching functions from hypervisor-based virtual switches to physical switches;
• Single Root I/O Virtualization Specification (SR-IOV), which enables sharing of I/O devices in virtual environments through creation of Virtual Functions that can be directly assigned to virtual machines — this requires OS support that isn’t yet available from most OS vendors;
• Virtual Functions (VF), a light-weight PCIe function and resources associated with the main data movement of the function are available to the virtual machine;
• NIC Partitioning (NPAR) is a QLogic method of dividing a physical Ethernet port into four “partitions” or virtual ports — this is similar to SR-IOV but is available now because it doesn’t require special OS support;
• Network Interface Virtualization (NIV) and Virtual Network Tag (VNtag) are Cisco-defined virtualization standards that offload switching functions from the hypervisor-based virtual switches to
physical switches (competing standard with VEPA & VEB). VMs appends a “tag” to all outgoing frames so the network can identify which frames belong to which VM; and,
• Virtualization technology from VMware, Citrix XenServer, Oracle Virtual Machine and Microsoft Hyper-V.
At launch, ConvergeFlex supports concurrent processing of TCP/IP, FCoE, and iSCSI, letting IT dynamically shift workloads to different protocols without rebooting or downtime. Now customers can shift workloads from an iSCSI SAN to an FCoE SAN without rebooting servers or waiting for an outage window, keeping business on track with no IT interference—and maintaining very high quality-of-service levels.
FlexOffload provides full hardware offload of FCoE, iSCSI and TCP/IP guaranteeing a low CPU utilization of an average of 9% and allowing more bandwidth for virtual machines and applications (see SSG-NOW report ‘Performance testing: The mileage may differ’ at http://www.ssg-now.com/cna-performance-testing-your-mileage-may-vary/) compared to competitive offerings that use software initiators and thus, generate choke points for virtual servers and applications.
SecureFlex protects data in-flight and at rest in heterogeneous environments, thus eliminating vendor lock-in. IP SEC and FC-SP are supported. If you have a enterprise storage array with 500 terabytes of data sitting on it, you wouldn’t want that much business-critical data locked into an adapter vendor’s cards because it’s been encrypted by that adapter rather than the storage vendor. SecureFlex provides the flexibility to avoid such lock in.
Finally, QLogic’s FlexLOM technology incorporated into the cLOM provides up to four ports of 1Gb Ethernet on the motherboard and also allows for expansion with the addition of a daughter-card. When the daughter-card expansion module is added, two of the four 1GbE will be replaced with 10GbE ports, providing customers with investment protection.
Second quarter 2010 results from the Dell’Oro Group show that QLogic commands market share for FCoE CNAs with over 58%, trailed by Emulex with 39% and other vendors with only 2.4% of the market. For 10 GbE adapters, QLogic, who first marked its entry in the 10 GbE market just over one year ago, had second place results of nearly 16%, following Intel’s lead of 22%. Dell’Oro forecasts that the 10GbE adapter market will grow from $200 million in 2010 to nearly $800 million by 2014.
QLogic’s market share numbers are the result of successful partnerships and OEM pacts with Dell, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems,VMware, HP and EMC, among others.
SSG-NOW Assessment
QLogic has made great strides in both the FCoE and 10 gigabit Ethernet markets with its first- and second-generation products. Now, with the introduction of its 3GCNAs, the company has further strengthened its position in CNAs and adapters and not only meet the needs of today’s converged and virtualized data centers, but at a time when Emulex is grappling with product integration issues from its recent ServerEngines acquisition and Brocade is still stuck on its first generation CNA—QLogic is positioning itself for dominance of market share in FCoE and 10 gigabit Ethernet.
One Response to “QLogic launches 3rd generation converged network adapters, flexes leadership position”
Leave a Reply
Thanks for the info on QLogic launch of 3rd generation converged network adapters, flexes leadership position