Brocade gets HP HBA support
But can't see any for CNA
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HP has added another brick to Brocade's wall by qualifying its host bus adapters with ProLiant servers, along with MSA and EVA drive arrays. HP will also ship Brocade's Fibre Channel over Ethernet switch.
This HP support combines with an earlier IBM qualification to substantially strengthen Brocade's HBA offer. The HBA market is largely a duopoly between Emulex and QLogic, with Brocade being a recent entrant. It claims quality of storage service advantages if its HBAs are used with its SAN fabric switches.
Madhu Matta, VP of Brocade's Server Division, said: "Our HBAs allow customers to consolidate more servers and virtualise server-to-storage environments, while simplifying overall management across the SAN in a cost-effective manner.”
This claim is based on Brocade's assertion that its HBAs extend ProLiant I/O performance "to an industry-best" 500,000 IOPS per port, and that "Brocade HBAs provide twice the throughput of competing products."
Brocade now has two tier one server vendor qualifications for its HBAs. However, the HBA future is seen as a transition to Converged Network Adapters (CNAs). These run the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol and connect to Ethernet switches, such as Brocade's 8000 FCoE switch, the one being OEM'd by HP.
This is a multiprotocol, layer 2, top-of-rack FCoE switch with 24 X 10GBitE Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) ports and eight 8GBit/s FC ports. Brocade's CNAs are not included in the HP agreement.
IBM, which is OEM'ing NetIron and FastIron Ethernet switches from Brocade's acquired Foundry operation, has not said anything about taking the 8000 switch, and has not qualified Brocade's CNAs.
Both Emulex and QLogic are offering and rapidly developing CNA products, with Emulex announcing today that HP has qualified its CNAs for its ProLiant servers and MSA, EVA and XP arrays. The Emulex CNAs are compatible with both Cisco and Brocade FCoE-based switches.
Emulex is defending itself aggressively against a hostile takeover from Ethernet switch vendor Broadcom, which is viewed as Broadcom's attempt to buy in FCoE technology. This HP qualification may well be used by Emulex to support its assertion that the Broadcom bid greatly undervalues the company.
QLogic announced IBM will use its 8100 CNA to provide FCoE connectivity on various rack and tower servers late last month.
It looks as if Brocade is lagging behind its competitors in the CNA qualification stakes, but it is early days in the FCoE market, with 2011 reckoned to the year when real deployments will start. ®
COMMENTS
FCoE Reality? Really?
The Register should evaluate the real technology behind FCoE. It's a ruse. The real value was common software stacks from the Duopoly of Q & E. But, in reality, the stacks are being rewritten for Ethernet chips, thereby killing the value of the compatibility matrix of FC.
Ethernet is supposed to be cheap and ubiquitous. The world doesn't need yet another expensive HBA and a new protocol. Customers will not adopt, at least not for a long time to come.
Converged networks have been happening for nearly 20 years with NAS and iSCSI. Maintaining compatibility and interoperability through TCP/IP is the right answer. Qlogic and Emulex don't like that answer because they can't make 70pts of gross margin on Ethernet.
Keep it simple!
Anonymous
IBM is supporting Brocade CNA
IBM is supporting both QLogic and Brocade CNAs for its System x servers. That makes Brocade equal to QLogic and Emulex in server vendor CNA qualification terms.
Chris.
Willy waving stats
--"This claim is based on Brocade's assertion that its HBAs extend ProLiant I/O performance "to an industry-best" 500,000 IOPS per port, and that "Brocade HBAs provide twice the throughput of competing products."--
That's only enough IOPS for 4,000 (10K rpm) disks. Gee, do you think that will be enough?
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