QLogic has launched 8Gb Fibre Channel/1Gb Ethernet ExpressModule for Sun Microsystems’ Sun Blade 6000 systems.
The company said that the QEM3572 ExpressModule, available from Sun as the StorageTek Dual 8Gb Fibre Channel Dual GbE ExpressModule Host Bus Adapter, consolidates ethernet and fibre channel connectivity onto a single card.
With two 1Gb ethernet ports and two 8Gb fibre channel ports, the ExpressModule unlocks the virtualisation capabilities of servers such as the Sun Blade X6270 server module, based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, the company said.
According to QLogic, the combination of QLogic 8Gb fibre channel and Sun Blade 6000 servers provides enterprises with the ability to set up number of virtual machines. Based on the PCIe ExpressModule open industry standard, the QLogic adapter can be added to or removed from a Sun Blade server without powering down the server.
The company said that the QEM3572 ExpressModule, based on QLogic’s Fibre Channel technology provides backward compatibility with legacy 2Gb and 4Gb fibre channel devices while allowing a pathway to 8Gb connectivity. In addition, it includes features such as SAN-level authentication and overlapping protection domains.
QLogic 8Gb Fibre Channel technology includes features such as message signaled interrupts (MSI-X) capabilities to optimise CPU performance, and solaris multiplexed I/O (MPxIO) failover, and the ability to address up to 16,000 LUNs per target, the company said.
Amit Vashi, vice president of marketing for host solutions group at Qlogic, said: Combined with the high-powered, multi-core Sun Blade 6000 series, the QEM3572 ExpressModule will meet the demands of bandwidth-hungry applications such as virtualisation, disk-to-disk replication, video post production and cloud computing environments.
