Emulex to Demonstrate Suite of Next Generation Technologies at CeBIT

Emulex Corporation, the industry's preeminent provider of advanced storage networking infrastructure solutions, today announced its line up of technology and solutions for demonstration the CeBIT 2005 Exhibition. A full range of 4 Gb/s technologies and new ease-of-use utilities from Emulex will be on display in solutions that incorporate products from partners Brocade, Engenio and Xyratex. "One central theme we'll be promoting at CeBIT is the advanced level of maturity we're now seeing in 4 Gb/s technologies," said Alan Wallman, vice president of European Operations for Emulex Corporation. "In addition, Emulex is migrating the same ease-of-use levels first seen in the storage industry with the advent of SMB SANs to enterprise level SAN environments, where we see increasing customer requirements for solutions that streamline installation and management processes." 4 Gb/s technologies on display at Emulex's booth at CeBIT include its Helios platform-based LightPulse LP11000 HBAs, and InSpeed SOC 422 embedded storage switches. Emulex's Enterprise AutoPilot Installer utility software, which simplifies the installation and upgrades of multiple HBAs in enterprise environments and integrates with its HBAnyware centralized management software will also be demonstrated. At a live demonstration in the Emulex stand (Hall 1, Stand 7g2, booth #B5) Emulex, Engenio Information Technologies, Xyratex and Brocade Communications collectively demonstrate integrated solutions that reflect both the working benefits of 4 Gb/s SAN technology and interoperability between the respective companies' platforms. Engenio is contributing its 6998 4 Gb/s enterprise class storage system, which is based on the company's own sixth-generation XBB architecture. The controller combines faster processors, buses and memory for an extremely high level of performance. Brocade is demonstrating the high-availability Brocade Silkworm(tm) 4100 SAN switch, which provides 4 Gb/s performance, Ports-on-Demand scalability, and up to 32 auto-sensing ports supporting 1, 2 and 4 Gb/s data rates and full backward compatibility with the world's largest installed base of SANs. Xyratex is supplying its high performance, high availability 4 Gb/s SBOD(tm) (Switched Bunch of Disks) enclosure, which features a switched architecture and state-of the-art 2.5" 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel drives. Emulex LP11000 HBAs, which feature the company's unique firmware upgradeable architecture and share a common driver model with previous generations of its HBAs, will be used to provide 4 Gb/s server connectivity. Emulex's InSpeed SOC 422 embedded storage switch will be used to deliver a high performance switched connectivity to each of the 2.5" 4 Gb/s drives in the storage array. Paul Talbut, CEO of United Kingdom-based storage networking integrator HPS and Chairman of Europe's Storage Networking Industry Association, said, "It's great to see industry leaders like Emulex, Brocade, Xyratex and Engenio demonstrating fully functional 4 Gb/s storage networking solutions at CeBIT. As our industry begins its transition to 4 Gb/s speeds, end-users need to feel comfortable that individual vendors' products can be seamlessly integrated into solutions that will enable them to realize the benefits of 4 Gb/s storage networking. The increased throughput delivered by 4 Gb/s SANs offers end-users a variety of benefits that range from faster application and back-up performance, to cost savings derived from a reduced number of connections needed between their storage and computing systems, to the investment protection that comes from solutions that are fully backward and forwards compatible. These demonstrations underscore that 4 Gb/s technologies are now at an advanced stage, and users can begin integrating 4 Gb/s SAN technologies into their storage strategies." Brocade and Emulex have worked together since the early days of Fibre Channel SAN deployments. The companies continue to partner in broad interoperability efforts and recently announced that they will co-develop an industry first multi-vendor SAN management wizard. "As leaders in the move to 4G, Brocade and Emulex share a commitment to interoperability in heterogeneous IT environments," said Tom Buiocchi, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Brocade. "We are seeing the SilkWorm 4100 deployed in both branch offices as a core SAN switch for mid-sized organizations and in enterprises implementing a core-to-edge SAN architecture and we are pleased to include it in this demonstration of the state of the art in high-performance SANs." To find out more about Emulex 4 Gb/s SAN technologies, visit www.emulex.com. CeBIT exhibition attendees can view multi-vendor 4 Gb/s solutions live at the CeBIT Emulex stand (Hall 1, Stand 7g2, booth #B5).