Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Storage networking equipment
Silver Award:
QLogic Corp. 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters
The QLogic Corp. 8100 Series Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapter (CNA) uses a single chip set to allow storage administrators to extend server and storage consolidation and virtualization projects by converging Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks. The adapter's architecture integrates five previously disparate components into one ASIC, handles storage and data networking traffic at 10 Gbps, and appears to servers as a dual-port Ethernet network interface card (NIC) and a dual-port FC host bus adapter (HBA).
The 8100 Series is also specifically designed for multi-core, multiprocessor environments because it generates less heat and consumes one-third the power of existing CNA chip sets.
Data storage managers looking ahead to FCoE integration will appreciate the 8100 Series' ability to full hardware offload for protocol processing. One judge commented that QLogic's second-generation PCIe adapter is "one of the best CNAs on the market." The same judge added that the 8100 is "easier to integrate than most because of built-in driver compatibility." And another judge on our panel called it the "standard of HBAs" and "a great idea."