ACADEMIA

“Emulex OCe14000 10GbE CNAs have been uniquely optimized to differentiate Dell server platforms and are designed to meet the challenging demands of enterprise, cloud and virtualized applications including new advances in software-defined networking (SDN),” said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. “Having our latest 10GbE portfolio now available through Dell strengthens our close partnership to develop differentiated end-to-end solutions in the networking space. These new solutions are also fully certified with the entire Dell Force 10 switch portfolio enabling complete solutions to be deployed with Dell servers, storage and switches. The addition of the OCe14000 10GbE CNAs also expands the number of Emulex offerings available to Dell customers and rounds out our current interconnect portfolio which includes our LightPulse Gen 5 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).”

Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNA technology enables higher virtual machine (VM) densities, supports secure hybrid clouds with OVN offload technology, and provides an open application performance interface (API) that integrates with next generation SDN solutions. Not only will the OneConnect 10GbE CNA be validated and a factory installed option on Dell PowerEdge platforms, but it will also be validated with, and complement additional Dell converged infrastructure platforms, such as the FCoE-capable Dell S5000 networking switch, and Dell Compellent and Dell EqualLogic storage arrays.

“Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNAs are ideal for Dell PowerEdge customers who require high density performance for cloud, converged infrastructure and virtualization deployments,” said Brian Payne, executive director of server solutions, Dell. “With higher bandwidth, reduced latency, storage offloads and the ability to efficiently facilitate VM migration both within and between data centers, this new adapter family matches our clients’ global storage and networking needs.”

Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNAs deliver a powerful set of features and capabilities, including:

• Optimized Bandwidth Allocation with Dell NPAR NIC Partitioning: Dell NPAR allows multiple PCI functions to be created on each network adapter card port. As a CNA, each port on the Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNA can be configured with either four NIC functions, or alternatively with three NIC functions and one iSCSI or FCoE storage function. NPAR is ideal for virtualized server environments because bandwidth allocation can be optimized to support I/O intensive applications, virtualization services, and server management functions.
• Simplified and Flexible System Management: The Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNA is compatible with the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller systems management solution. iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller technology, which allows administrators to deploy, monitor, manage, configure, update, troubleshoot and remediate Dell servers from any location, and without the use of agents. Adapters can also be controlled, configured and managed from a single console using Emulex OneCommand® Manager.
• High-Performance Virtualization: Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNAs use highly efficient and scalable hardware offload technology to transfer the overhead of virtual networking which provides up to 50 percent better CPU utilization1 compared to standard NICs when used for VMware VirtualWire connection, thereby increasing the number of VMs supported per server. The Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNA also delivers a 4x performance increase in small packet network performance2 required to scale transaction-heavy and clustered applications.
• Open Enablement of SDN: The Emulex SURF open API provides the tools needed to implement SDN technology that can be optimized for next generation applications and new industry standards, such as OpenStack and OpenFlow.
• Rapid, Secure and Scalable Hybrid Cloud Connectivity: Emulex Virtual Network Exceleration (VNeX) offload technology provides up to 70 percent better performance1 vs. software-only implementations of emerging OVN standards such as Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) used by Microsoft Hyper-V Network Virtualization and Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) used in VMware NSX.
• Flexible Storage Connectivity using FCoE and iSCSI Hardware Offloads: Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNAs support FCoE offload using the same field-proven Emulex drivers that work with Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel HBAs. Emulex OneConnect 10GbE CNAs also supports hardware iSCSI offload, running storage traffic over a Data Center Bridging (DCB) Ethernet fabric, delivering performance that is superior to solutions based on software initiators and standard NICs.