COSTA MESA, Calif., Sept. 18, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) announced today new product capabilities that extend the company's leadership position within the data center virtualization market. The Company's innovative LightPulse(r) Virtual HBA technology provides enhanced SAN functionality for virtualized servers, and is available to end users deploying its market-leading family of 4Gb/s host bus adapters (HBAs). Additionally, Emulex is extending support for the Virtual Fabric standard within its HBAs to help provide improved fabric security, manageability, and efficiency. Today also marks production availability of its innovative AV150 Intelligent Storage Processor, which provides the foundation for an emerging class of storage virtualization solutions. Together with its innovative new HBA capabilities, the AV150 positions Emulex uniquely to provide the key building block technologies that enhance and enable the three pillars of the virtualized data center -- server virtualization, fabric virtualization, and storage virtualization.
Data center virtualization provides IT executives with lower acquisition costs through hardware consolidation and portability; more fully utilized compute, fabric, and storage resources; and improved efficiency and management of equipment. Applying data center virtualization with an end-to-end strategy enables IT executives to leverage infrastructure solutions that are extensible and address the requirements of server, fabric and storage virtualization.
"Emulex is at the forefront of delivering new products and enhanced capabilities that not only drive intelligence and value into the SAN, but provide the building blocks for our end user customers migrating to a next generation virtualized data center," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corp. "Availability of our LightPulse Virtual HBA technology and AV150 intelligent storage processor, coupled with support for virtual fabrics, reinforces Emulex's competitive edge and commitment to delivering data center virtualization solutions that enable our customers to evolve their systems to meet the ongoing demand for consolidation and improved utilization."
Emulex is well positioned to deliver enabling technologies for IT managers deploying end-to-end data center virtualization strategies. Emulex 4Gb/s HBAs provide enhanced functionality for virtualized servers, such as superior flexibility and control over storage access. Coupled with Virtual Fabric support, Emulex HBAs provide the unique capabilities that allow an IT executive to integrate a future-proof set of SAN infrastructure solutions that will scale as the end user's data center virtualization strategy evolves. With the addition of the AV150 intelligent storage processor platform to its product portfolio, Emulex solutions now extend to storage virtualization.
"As a leader in storage networking technology, Cisco was first to market with virtual SAN (VSAN) technology, and we welcome solutions such as the Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBAs that expand virtualization options for our joint customers," said Rajeev Bhardwaj, director of product management, Data Center Business Unit at Cisco. "These solutions help to enhance infrastructure scalability, resiliency and agility to support our enterprise customers' business goals."
Emulex Virtualization Products
-- Server Virtualization - Emulex 4Gb/s HBAs now offer its LightPulse
Virtual HBA technology, along with a developer's kit for use by
end users and technology partners within Linux-based server
environments, including Xen virtualized servers. Emulex's Virtual
HBA technology, which will be available for additional virtualized
server solutions next quarter, allows end users to effectively
virtualize the HBA functionality such that each virtual machine
running on a server can share a pool of HBAs, yet have independent
access to its own protected storage. This enables administrators
to leverage standard SAN management tools and best practices, such
as fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking, and enables the full use
of fabric-based quality-of-service and accounting chargeback
capabilities. It also provides the most efficient utilization of
the HBAs in the server, while ensuring the highest levels of data
protection available in the industry. Emulex LightPulse Virtual
HBA technology is based on the industry standard N-Port ID
Virtualization (NPIV) and has been tested for compatibility with
the industry's leading fabric switches.
-- Storage Virtualization - Emulex Intelligent Storage Processor
AV150 incorporates high-performance processing capability and
support for multiple protocols, making it an ideal platform for
storage virtualization platforms. As the underlying technology for
intelligent switches and SAN appliances, the AV150 enables such
storage virtualization applications as non-disruptive data
migration, data replication, heterogeneous volume management, and
virtual tape libraries. The AV150 will begin product shipments
with a top-tier customer next quarter.
-- Virtual Fabrics - Emulex is extending support for industry-
standard Virtual Fabric within its 4Gb/s HBAs by adding the
ability for a single HBA to simultaneously and natively access
multiple fabrics. This capability enables virtual fabric services
to be optimized according to lines of business, applications or
virtual machines. Implementations of virtual fabric such as
Cisco's VSAN, provide end-users the ability to create isolated
domains within a single physical SAN fabric or switch, each with
its own set of fabric services. These logical SANs can be
optimized for maximum security, manageability, and efficiency.
Virtual fabrics are also ideal for secure SAN consolidation, and
allow for more efficient storage network utilization.
For more information about Emulex data center virtualization products, please visit kiosk No. 10 at InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum, located at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, Sept. 25 - 26. Emulex will also showcase its new data center virtualization products at Storage Decisions at the Hilton Hotel in New York City, Sept. 27 - 28, Booth No. 801. Additional details are available at www.emulex.com/virtualization.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity and a leading provider of critical building blocks for intelligent data center infrastructure solutions. The world's leading server and storage providers rely on Emulex award-winning HBAs, embedded storage switching, intelligent storage platforms and I/O controller products to build reliable, scalable and high performance storage and server solutions. Emulex ranked number 19 in the Deloitte 2005 Technology Fast 50 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:ELX). Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California. News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at http://www.emulex.com.
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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. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.