Overview

QLogic is capping off an impressive year of FCoE design wins by announcing that Dell has selected QLogic’s 8100 series Converged Network Adapters (CNA) for use in its PowerEdge Servers and Blades, making QLogic FCoE technology a key component of Dell’s Efficient Enterprise Initiative. The announcement includes:

• PowerEdge Servers. The QLogic QL8152 dual-port CNA will provide support for Dell PowerEdge Server models R410, R510, R610, R710, T610, and T710. It will also include the new Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) powered PowerEdge R610 and R710 rack servers and T610 and T710 tower servers.
• PowerEdge Blades. Designed specifically for Dell, the QLogic QME8142 dual-port mezzanine adapter will provide support for Dell PowerEdge Blade Server models M600, M605, M610, M710, M805, M905, and M910. This will also include the new Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) powered PowerEdge M610 and M710 blade servers
• Greater focus on virtualized environments. A big part of Dell’s Efficient Enterprise campaign is the ability to create highly virtualized environments leveraging VMware. The QLogic 8100 series CNAs are the only single chip CNAs currently certified with VMware vSphere 4, as indicated on the VMware HCL. [1]

These products will be generally available this month for implementation through Dell’s global distribution channels.

Analysis

This announcement puts QLogic in a great position to translate its design wins into serious 2010 customer deployments. As organizations build more efficient and dynamic data centers to support rapidly changing business needs, consolidation and efficiency technologies like server virtualization and converged networks will play a more important role. This latest announcement from QLogic and Dell will benefit IT because:

• Organizations want to do more with virtualized environments. ESG research[2] confirms that organizations are looking to extract more value from their virtualized server environments. Top IT initiatives are centered on the capability to consolidate more physical servers and expand the number of applications hosted on virtual machines. Because virtualized environments require networked storage to deliver advanced mobility functions, one of the keys to guaranteeing success will be to ensure that the network offers sufficient performance. Utilizing 10 Gig FCoE today will provide the requisite performance to enable additional consolidation without negatively impacting the applications. It also provides investment protection with existing Fibre Channel (FC) drivers and the Ethernet roadmap (40Gbps, 100Gbps) will deliver even better throughput. QLogic’s certification with VMware vSphere 4 only strengthens the alignment between these two technologies.

• It provides a graceful way to migrate from FC to Ethernet. There has been and still continues to be a lot of investment in FC products in the data center. However, looking forward, ESG’s research confirms that organizations are planning to deploy Ethernet and FCoE at a much higher rate than Fibre Channel. Figure 2 illustrates that FC, while still a dominant storage network protocol, will not see the growth that Ethernet and FCoE will over the next two years. This announcement is another proof point in that trend: this partnership incorporates QLogic FCoE into Dell solutions in order to offer Dell’s customers a way to protect their existing FC deployments while delivering higher levels of consolidation and efficiency in virtualized environments.

• It provides greater choice for FCoE powered solutions. QLogic closes out 2009 with numerous FCoE design wins from multiple vendors including IBM, EMC, and NetApp. Now, with Dell on board, users will be able to select QLogic FCoE solutions from a wide range of vendors—all with deployment-ready solutions.

What’s Next

If 2009 was the year of FCoE certifications, what is in the cards for 2010? In order to maintain FCoE momentum into 2010 and beyond, QLogic needs to:

• Highlight significant FCoE customer wins. As its partners begin to sell and deploy QLogic FCoE solutions in the data center, QLogic needs to document and share this information. Many times, IT organizations adopt an “Are any of my peers using it?” stance when it comes to the adoption of new technology. To help accelerate adoption, QLogic needs to follow up on its numerous design wins with a plethora of customer success stories. As IT organizations continue to focus on reducing operational expenses, the stories should highlight those benefits as derived from FCoE.
• Encourage OEM partners to make FCoE the de facto standard for virtualized environments. If QLogic can convince its partners that FCoE is the network protocol of choice for virtualized server environments, it will accelerate adoption. The increased volume will assist in driving down the capital costs.

The Bigger Truth

2009 was an important development year for FCoE in general and for QLogic in particular as its second generation single chip FCoE technology became generally available and was certified by major IT vendors including IBM, Dell, EMC, and NetApp. It certainly was an important step for FCoE adoption into the data center. Customers need to be assured that any solution they plan to deploy will work as advertised and will be qualified and supported by the vendor. As we move into 2010, with most major vendors offering a fully supported QLogic FCoE solution, ESG expects to see organizations begin to leverage these solutions as they transform their data centers into more efficient and effective virtualized environments. This will be especially true for those organizations with large existing FC environments.

FCoE will further benefit from Dell’s marketing muscle as it promotes its Efficient Enterprise campaign and highlights FCoE as a key part of its story. Packaged with Dell PowerEdge servers and blades, QLogic’s Series 8100 FCoE CNAs will enable Dell to deliver performance, convergence, and efficiency to the most demanding environments.

[2] Source: ESG Research Report, 2009 Data Center Spending Intentions, March 2009.