QLogic and Dell deliver certified 10Gb Ethernet Converged Networking solutions

“The evolution of the data centre has placed a premium on performance, choice and flexibility, and these are core values prominent across the QLogic portfolio,” said Amit Vashi, vice president of products, technology and planning, QLogic. “Our long-time partnership with Dell, and in particular the combination of QLogic 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) CNAs and Dell Networking modular switches, gives our customers choice and flexibility, as well as the ultimate in performance and value.”

For IT organisations, one of the most important initiatives to meet the goal of maximizing storage and data network resources is the consolidation of server I/O. One converged network optimized for both LAN and SAN traffic reduces deployment and operational costs, while significantly improving an IT organisation’s ability to respond to dynamic business needs.

“A critical part of enabling customers to accelerate migration to advanced platforms is simplifying the technology delivering the fabric,” said Arpit Joshipura, vice president, product management and marketing, Dell Networking. “By working with strategic partners such as QLogic, we’re able to provide our mutual customers a highly advanced Dell Active Fabric solution that boosts the performance of consolidated I/O traffic and improves the economics of a converged data centre—all while simplifying operations and management.”

Specifically, QLogic 8200 Series and 8300 Series CNAs are now certified with Dell Networking S5000 modular unified storage switches. The Dell Networking S5000 is Dell’s first fully modular, converged top-of-rack switch, specifically designed to maximize compute and storage network resources in a converged data centre environment. QLogic 10GbE CNAs are an ideal connectivity choice, providing leading flexibility, performance and functionality while simultaneously supporting storage and data network traffic. Deployed together, QLogic 10GbE CNAs and Dell Networking switches deliver high-density LAN and SAN convergence and feature-rich storage networking with a future-proof design for maximum investment protection. QLogic 10GbE CNAs support simultaneous data (TCP/IP) and storage (FCoE and iSCSI) protocols. The ability to support multiple protocols simultaneously on the same hardware offers multi-tenancy flexibility, which is ideal for private and public cloud environments. High-performance QLogic 10GbE CNAs are also optimized for virtualised environments that require excellent I/O performance to service growing numbers of virtual machines.

The Dell Networking S5000 modular switch provides complete support for iSCSI, RoCE, NAS, FCoE and native Fibre Channel, all on the same platform, delivering greater deployment flexibility and IT budget savings compared to fixed-port switches. The unique modular design enables migration to a converged solution at the pace of each end-user, plus increased port counts without replacing the entire switch. The S5000 hardware is future-proofed to support newer features and options when released without needing to sacrifice existing infrastructure investments.