ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 24, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Storage Networking World -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity, today announced its new LightPulse(r) Virtual HBA Technology, which is expected to provide significant enhancements to virtualized server environments. Utilizing industry standard N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), Emulex's LightPulse Virtual HBA technology provides the foundation for improved SAN management, data protection, and application recovery by enabling virtual servers to use dedicated SAN resources.
Server virtualization enables end users to consolidate multiple applications onto fewer servers, reducing support costs, improving server utilization, and providing enhanced disaster recovery and application deployment capabilities. As virtualized servers are increasingly deployed in a scale-out configuration for multiple operating system instances running production applications, the need for networked storage increases. Networked storage is an ideal match for virtualized server environments because it enables application portability and highly reliable, consolidated storage access and resource management.
According to IDC, end users are embracing virtualization across all sectors of the server market, including production-level applications and business critical workloads. "Customers are deploying server virtualization in workloads that are strongly tied to SAN-based storage," said Michelle Bailey, Director of Enterprise Server Research at IDC. "Since server virtualization enables greater server utilization and application portability, it is an excellent match for Fibre Channel SANs."
Emulex's Virtual HBA technology enables server virtualization solutions to enhance SAN security and data protection by enforcing SAN resource access rights on a per virtual machine basis. By incorporating support for the NPIV standard, Emulex's Virtual HBA technology enables server virtualization solutions to fully utilize key SAN management techniques, including zoning, LUN mapping and LUN masking to insure maximum data security. For example, zoning enforces storage access restrictions and ensures that only designated personnel may retrieve critical or sensitive data stored on the network. Further, NPIV enables applications to be migrated across server platforms while maintaining access to SAN-based data, enabling application portability and disaster recovery.
Emulex's Virtual HBA technology is implemented in Emulex's HBA firmware and drivers, making it available for industry standard operating system environments as well as specific customer OS environments. Emulex's Virtual HBA technology is shipping today as part of the IBM System z9 mainframe server solution.
"Server virtualization adoption is on the rise and has spawned a new class of servers to realize the significant benefits of SANs. Today, less than 10 percent of servers deployed are connected to SANs, however, the majority of servers deployed with production virtualization solutions like industry-leading VMware ESX Server are SAN attached so we are confident the growth of virtualization will drive SAN market expansion," said Mike Smith, executive vice president, worldwide marketing, Emulex. "In fact, Emulex Virtual HBA technology is already integrated into the IBM System z9, which validates the significant time-to-market advantages associated with our unique hardware-independent HBA architecture model." Last quarter, the IBM System z9 mainframe, with integrated virtualization capabilities, was broadly deployed with a fully supported SAN connectivity solution from Emulex.
Virtualization Demonstration Details
Emulex is teaming with industry leaders, including Brocade, Cisco, McData and VMware, at Storage Networking World to showcase server virtualization technology within an industry standard server environment. The demonstration features VMware virtualization technology running multiple operating system environments within a high performance SAN environment, utilizing Emulex's generally available, virtualization-enabled LightPulse 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs, along with industry-leading NPIV-enabled fabric switches. Visit Emulex in booth P-23 at Fall Storage Networking World in Orlando, Florida, October 25-26, 2005.
"VMware is working closely with Emulex to expand the benefits of VMware virtual infrastructure solutions in SAN environments," said Karthik Rau, senior director, product management, VMware. "We are pleased to see the arrival of capabilities targeted at virtualized environments from leading SAN infrastructure vendors such as Emulex. We expect our collaborations to deliver increased SAN manageability and security for our joint customers."
The benefits expected from NPIV support in Emulex SAN connectivity solutions integrated with virtualized server and storage environments include:
-- Maximum Data Security and Data Protection -- integrated support
for LUN Masking, LUN Mapping and Zoning to individual virtual
machines.
-- Enhanced management of SAN resources for virtual machines via
standardized SAN management tools
-- Increased availability of SAN resources for virtual machines, by
allowing dedicated SAN resources to be available in failover and
migration scenarios
What is NPIV?
NPIV allows a single Fibre Channel port to appear as multiple, distinct ports providing separate port identification and security zoning within the fabric for each operating system image as if each operating system image had its own unique physical port. NPIV is specified in the latest version of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standardization (INCITS) Fibre Channel standard. This industry-standard extension is designed to allow a Fibre Channel host bus adapter to perform multiple "logins" to a Fibre Channel fabric using a single physical port. The I/O transactions of each operating system image are separately identified, managed, and transmitted, and are processed the same as if each operating system image had its own unique physical SAN connection.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the industry's preeminent source for a broad range of advanced storage networking infrastructure solutions spanning host bus adapters, embedded storage switches, I/O controllers and SAN Storage Switches. Emulex ranked number 19 in the Deloitte 2005 Technology Fast 50 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:ELX).
The world's leading server and storage providers rely on Emulex HBAs, embedded storage switching and I/O controller products to build reliable, scalable and high performance storage solutions. The Emulex award-winning product families, including its LightPulse(r) HBAs and InSpeed(tm) embedded storage switching products, are based on internally developed ASIC, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability, flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership. The company's products have been selected by the world's leading server and storage providers, including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Siemens, Bull, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Engenio, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, Quantum Corp., StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, Unisys and Xyratex. Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California. News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at http://www.emulex.com.
EMULEX -- We network storage
Emulex Safe Harbor Statement
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. The company wishes to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Those factors include the rapidly changing nature of technology, evolving industry standards and frequent introductions of new products and enhancements by competitors; fluctuation in the growth of Fibre Channel and IP markets; changes in economic conditions or changes in end-user demand for technology solutions; fluctuations or delays in customer orders; the highly competitive nature of the markets for Emulex's products; Emulex's ability to gain market acceptance for its products; the company's ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the company's reliance on third-party suppliers. These and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are also discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q. Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Retek are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
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