Fibre Channel SANs

LSI joins 8 Gbps FC party with new disk array

There’s a lot of 8 Gbps Fibre Channel going around these days.

LSI Corp. joined EMC Corp. today in announcing new support for the next leap in Fibre Channel throughput with the Engenio 4900 system it has launched to replace its 3994 midrange disk array. Also new with this system is support for 1 Gbps iSCSI host connectivity and support for Seagate’s full disk encryption (FDE).

The 4900 can hold up to 112 drives and 2 GB or 4 GB cache. Add-on software features include Encryption, Partitioning, Snapshot, Volume Copy, Remote Volume Mirroring. LSI’s midrange products are OEMed by IBM Corp. for its midrange DS3000 and DS4000 SAN product lines. 

Like EMC, LSI isn’t adding native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support to its arrays yet. “We’re not quite ready to talk about our plans there yet,” said Steve Gardner, diretor of product marketing for LSI. “FCoE and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) is a battle that will heat up in the second half of next year.”

This outlook is supported by data collected by market research firm TheInfoPro, whose storage market research director Robert Stevenson told SearchStorage that enterprise users are already beginning the transition to 8 Gbps FC, with FCoE still on the back burner.

More storage industry perspectives on FCoE

Yesterday, we posted a story about Dell’Oro Group’s prediction that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) sales growth would outpace that of FC by 2011. That report got us lots of great feedback during the preparation of that news item, not all of which could fit in the news article, so here are some raw “deleted scenes” — additional points of view to go with that piece from analysts, users and financial experts.

Jeff Boles, director of validation services and senior analyst for the Taneja Group –

Right now, we have a scattering of fabrics and technologies, and while the promises of FCoE are interesting (if not compelling) for the day to day practitioner, transitioning to this new fabric is a bit more complex than filling your shopping cart on Amazon.com.

What I fully expect to happen is a multi-year integration of converged Ethernet as a broad fabric that joins together the multiple fabric domains in the enterprise data center. Those separate domains - FC, InfiniBand, and even traditional Ethernet - may rapidly become converged in a 10gb core, but will likely keep growing at a steady pace, or at least being maintained with regular equipment replacements. Once a converged core is in place (over years), we’ll likely see new equipment deployments taking place on the converged fabric when it is justified (high I/O demands, cable simplification in large infrastructures).

But a full tilt shift to FCoE as the new fabric, is likely out beyond the 3 year mark for aggressive businesses, and well beyond the 5 year mark for less aggressive businesses. The problem plain and simple, is that many, many businesses are well served by their current fabrics and skillsets, and the transition to converged ethernet, and FCoE, will only get near term adoption when it is fully justified. Many times, existing fabrics and skillsets will outweigh the battle over port prices and power utilization. While CEE/FCoE will change the computing landscape, my expectation is that this will happen in the long term. 

Andrew Reichman, senior analyst for Forrester Research –

I’m seeing vendors like Brocade, Cisco, QLogic and NetApp move towards greater support for FCoE. The benefits often include reduction of complexity in cabling, and a longer term desire for simplification of SAN and LAN networking through network convergence. That said, it is likely to take a long time to see the benefits, and require a fairly significant investment in new equipment and re-architecting. I do believe that storage traffic will be on Ethernet at some point, the question is how soon- The FCoE standard has been slow to emerge, which has delayed adoption, but early adopters seem to be getting started now. 2011 seems a bit ambitious for broad adoption beyond FC, but I think it might not be too far off. You do have to remember that storage buyers are extremely conservative and like to see very mature products and architectures before making a big change, but once the momentum gets going, it’s likely to grow rapidly.

Mark Kelleher, Managing Director, Equity Research, Brigantine Advisors –

Dell’Oro isn’t really going out on a limb with its prediction that FCoE will supplant Fibre Channel by 2011 – that’s a common assumption in the storage industry. One converged fabric for all enterprise communications makes a lot of sense. The fibre channel switch and HBA people are moving in that direction, the Ethernet providers are moving in that direction, there’s really no reason it would not. The key difference between FC and Ethernet is that Ethernet can lose packets and take its time to recover, while FC guarantees delivery, and does not drop packets. To port the upper layers of the FC stack onto Ethernet, the Ethernet protocol itself has to be augmented to allow ‘lossless’ transmission of data under certain circumstances. That is all incorporated in FCoE, and the technology is just now reaching the market. Deployment starting now thru next year, widespread adoption by 2011.

Keep an eye on the core FC vendors: Brocade, Emulex, and QLogic. Brocade sells switches (although moving into the host-bus adapter market), while Emulex and QLogic are knows for selling the input/output offload engines that connect servers to FC (host-bus adapters, or HBAs). To connect to Ethernet, servers use “Network Interface Cards”, or NICs. With the new FCoE protocol, those two functions are combined into a “converged network adapter”, or CNA. Sell through of CNAs will tell us how the adoption of FCoE is progressing.

Reinoud Reynders, IT manager at University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium–

I believe very strongly in FCoE. Cisco is pushing this very hard and indeed, they have a strong story. Just one plug for all your I/O (network and SAN) on 10 Gb, 1 switch that separates client access (IP network) [from the] storage network: it’s a great plan.

I will replace my FC-SAN switches [around] Q2 2011. Personally, I believe 2011 is a little bit to early for the [broader industry] cross over, but maybe 2012.

Feel free to add your own perspective in our comments section below!

Broadcom quits knocking on Emulex’s door *UPDATED*

It turns out Broadcom can take a hint after all.

After Emulex repeatedly spurned its acquisition offers, Broadcom today threw in the towel and said it will walk away. However, the Ethernet-chip maker may not be giving up on buying a storage company altogether.

“Although we were unable to negotiate an expeditious and friendly transaction at a price that makes sense to us given the expectations set by the Emulex board, there are other value-creating alternatives that we will now turn our attention to as we position Broadcom to capitalize on the emerging opportunities in the converged enterprise networking markets,” Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor said in a news release.

Broadcom’s decision to walk came after Emulex’s board today rejected its latest offer to buy the HBA company, claiming the bid of $11 per share or about $912 million is still too low.

“We unanimously believe Emulex will deliver significantly more value than Broadcom’s revised offer through the company’s rapidly developing converged networking business and solid execution in our host server and embedded storage markets,” Emulex chairman Paul Folino said in a statement.

Folino did add, “we would of course give full consideration to a bona fide offer from any party that reflects the full value of the company.”

Broadcom had been chasing Emulex since December, and made its first formal offer of $9.25 per share or $764 million in April. Emulex management has accused Broadcom of trying to take advantage of its depressed stock price during bad economic times. Emulex shares closed at $9.70 Wednesday, but opened at $8.44 today and traded at $8.90 by mid-afternoon after the deal fell through.

What are Broadcom’s alternatives? Emulex rival QLogic would be even more expensive to buy, so that’s probably not an option. Broadcom can try to build its own Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) products, or it could pursue LSI’s dormant FC HBA technology.

Emulex also said today it expects to report revenues of approximately $78 million to $79 million for last quarter, in the high end of its forecast of $73 million to $80 million. CEO Jim McCluney added that Emulex recently scored two OEM design wins for its LightPulse HBAs and two design wins for its 10 Gbps Ethernet OneConnect converged network adapters – all with tier 1 vendors. Emulex did not name its partners on those deals.