Chelsio Communications Inc., a leading provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified wire solutions, announced that its S310/320 Storage Accelerators are the first in the industry to support 10GbE iSCSI Initiator functionality. This solution is extremely cost-effective since it provides complete high-performance SAN connectivity within a 10 Gigabit server adapter capable of performing storage, data, and cluster networking simultaneously. Chelsio also announced the 10G iSCSI-FC Gateway, a feature-rich solution specifically designed for cost-effective storage consolidation and high-performance iSCSI links to enterprise Storage Area Networks (SANs). Designed to connect IP-based servers to shared Fibre Channel (FC) storage networks, the 10G iSCSI-FC Gateway enables organizations to quickly and cost-effectively extend the benefits of SANs -- including improved backup, high availability, and storage asset utilization -- across a wider range of servers and applications. High-Performance IP SAN Connectivity Using Chelsio S310/S320 The Chelsio S310/320 adapters provide access to a 10GbE iSCSI SAN without sacrificing server performance. Interrupts, CPU utilization, memory bus utilization and host bus access associated with iSCSI and TCP/IP are significantly reduced by offloading these functions onto the S310/320 adapter. In addition, all the functionality is supported using the standard 1500 byte Ethernet frames, thus enabling full routing of the traffic. The S310/320 adapters also support hardware iSCSI digest implementation, which ensures data integrity over a layer 3 TCP network without burdening the host CPU. Server CPU utilization testing for typical application profiles and current servers demonstrates that Chelsio iSCSI adapters deliver more than twice the throughput improvement over a software initiator using Layer 2 NIC implementation using standard Ethernet frames. Servers equipped with Chelsio's S310/320 adapters are now able to connect to SANs with complete iSCSI functionality. The S310/320 adapters eliminate the high up-front acquisition costs of adding storage networking to a server by allowing IT professionals to avoid having to purchase a server with a separate adapter pre-installed. In the past, IT professionals had to purchase separate adapters to perform simultaneous data, storage, and cluster networking functions versus purchasing a server equipped with a S310/320 adapter, designed to provide three functions in a single network device. "This is yet another example of how Chelsio's T3 unified wire engine technology delivers state-of-the-art functionality to the 10 Gigabit Ethernet network, enabling true unified networking on a single fabric," said Kianoosh Naghshineh, president and CEO of Chelsio Communications. "Our 10GbE Storage Accelerators now deliver features that were previously only achievable with expensive, single purpose Fibre Channel equipment. Our unified wire customers can now run their Fibre Channel applications on the same server concurrently with their networking and clustering applications, at no additional premium." Pricing for the Chelsio 10GbE Storage Accelerators starts at $1,195. iSCSI Initiator capability for Chelsio Storage Accelerators is currently in beta test and will start shipping in Q1'08. Extended Storage Connectivity with 10G iSCSI-FC Gateway The Chelsio 10G iSCSI-FC Gateway addresses two major trends in enterprise computing. Enterprise SANs based on Fibre Channel (FC) have been traditionally used to support mission-critical data storage and business applications in data centers. At the same time, many organizations are deploying iSCSI and need access to their legacy FC shared storage across all server architectures and applications. By expanding SAN access via cost-effective iSCSI links to IP-based servers, storage can be more efficiently managed, backed up and secured -- enabling storage management best practices, and the existing customer investment in FC can be leveraged. With two 10 Gigabit Ethernet and two FC ports, the Chelsio iSCSI Gateway serves as a bridge between FC SANs and IP-attached servers, and vice-versa. A single unit can scale to support hundreds of servers and can also be used for direct attachment of 10GbE iSCSI-equipped servers to midrange and high-end storage arrays. The gateway is designed specifically for fast and easy connections to IP and FC SAN and host devices. The Chelsio 10G iSCSI-FC Gateway is a 1U height device that can be easily clustered to provide redundant, high-availability connectivity. "IT professionals have come to depend up Chelsio's 10GbE Storage Accelerator solutions for mission-critical storage networking," said Naghshineh. "We are growing our solution set in response to the requirement for extended storage consolidation and manageability across all classes of servers and applications. This new product will enable our customers to leverage their existing investment in FC while transitioning to a lower cost compute environment based on iSCSI."