Emulex Aims to Converge LANs & SANs in Data Centers

Storage and networking vendors are pushing hard to merge and converge local-area networks (LANs) and storage-area networks (SANs) in the data center to reduce the complexity and cost caused by operating and managing separate networks and their associated switches, routers, cables, and other gear. Different vendors are taking different approaches, but many of the major vendors are focusing on developing some form of Ethernet to handle storage traffic, with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) seemingly gaining the most support.

Emulex, perhaps best known for its Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, today celebrated its 30th anniversary by ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and rolling out a wave of new products, including a Universal Converged Network Adapter (CNA) called OneConnect that will be delivered later this year. It is designed to handle a variety of protocols over a 10-Gbit/s Ethernet network. The company also introduced host-based 8-Gbit/s encryption, a centralized and automated management framework for its CNAs, and a partner program to get its technology into the field.

The rollout comes as network vendors like Cisco and others are developing an enhanced version of Ethernet and FCoE gear to let IT departments consolidate their SANs and LANs onto a single network. CNAs from Emulex and rival QLogic are another piece of the overall ecosystem of products that are required to enable that convergence, which also will be supported by major storage companies like EMC, NetApp, and others. Rivals are pushing a similar convergence strategy using InfiniBand, which was touted in product announcements earlier this week by Mellanox Technologies.

"IT managers can consolidate servers and storage, and they need a way to consolidate their networks," says Shaun Walsh, vice president of corporate marketing for Emulex. "The Universal CNA is a single card and a single connection that lets you run NAS, iSCSI, IP, FCoE, and enhanced RDMA, and you can use any port for any of those protocols and optimize connectivity on the back of the server."

Emulex is betting that the bad economy and the effort to cut costs will prompt businesses to practice what it calls "convergonomics" and try to save money by consolidating data center infrastructure and boosting utilization rates. The growth of server virtualization is causing major changes in network traffic flow within data centers, and IT managers have the opportunity to reduce expenditures on switches, adapters, network directors, power, and cooling through consolidation, Walsh argues.For companies operating thousands of servers -- virtual or blades -- and complicated networks in large data centers, consolidation onto a single, faster, and more reliable Ethernet network is the wave of the future, Walsh says. Emulex's CNA also can offload work from the server CPU, resulting in 20 percent savings in cycles that can be used to power virtual machines or other processes, he says.

The real challenge isn't developing equipment for converged networks but improving Ethernet so it offers the benefits of Fibre Channel, such as low latency and guaranteed delivery of data, says Arun Taneja, founder of industry research firm Taneja Group.

"There's a reason why we have several networks in the data center. Ethernet just hasn't been fast enough or reliable enough to do justice to storage traffic, which is different than network data traffic," Taneja says. Many companies are using iSCSI storage systems on 1-Gbit/s Ethernet networks, but it has only gained ground among small and mid-sized businesses that are using it for applications that can tolerate some delay in storage traffic. It hasn't gained much ground in large data center environments, he says. "There is no way storage managers are going to give up on Fibre Channel systems, because it gets the job done and does it well."

The move toward 10-Gigabit Ethernet should in theory provide enough bandwidth to let iSCSI compete with 8-Gigabit Fibre Channel, the next generation of FC. But the real issue isn't bandwidth, but the lack of guaranteed delivery in Ethernet, Taneja says. Ethernet drops packets when traffic congestion occurs. "There is so much overhead and latency that it isn't good enough for storage networks today."

Vendors are trying to correct those problems with such things as Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) or Data Center Ethernet (DCE) or Data Center Bridging (DCB), which are designed to provide a "lossless" version of Ethernet that can prioritize traffic and reduce congestion. Whether that will result in the growth of FCoE or a faster version of iSCSI is still unclear. Taneja predicts that enterprises will begin testing and experimenting with the new versions of Ethernet and faster networking gear this year, but he doesn't see much uptake until next year. "This will be a major transition and transitions are miserable for vendors and IT managers. This whole transition is going to take longer than expected."Emulex, meanwhile, also announced today a partnership with RSA, the security division of EMC, to provide Emulex SecureConneX, technology that will encrypt data as it travels over the network or sits in storage. RSA is providing the encryption key management software. Emulex also introduced OneCommand, a management system for its CNAs that provides a single interface for handling deployment, provisioning, asset management, connectivity, security, and quality of service. The company also said it was working with 75 partners to develop a OneConnect ecosystem and help market and sell the technology.