Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced that it is extending the capabilities of its leading-edge Virtual Host Bus Adapter (HBA) technology to its emerging technology platforms: 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapters (CNAs). Emulex Virtual HBA technology, which is based on industry-standard N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), is vital for effectively managing storage-connected resources in a server virtualization environment.

When combined with the inherent advantages and bandwidth of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel and 10Gb/s FCoE, Emulex enables increased benefits of server virtualization and consolidation by providing greater I/O capacity within the server. Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBAs and CNAs are equipped with a Service Level Interface (SLI), which enables driver compatibility across all generations of Emulex products, including the forthcoming 8Gb/s LightPulse LPe12000 HBAs and FCoE CNAs.

"Extending support for Emulex Virtual HBA technology to our new suite of 8Gb/s and FCoE products will enable our end user customers to gain even greater benefits from server virtualization," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex. "Emulex has historically driven forward the adoption of new Fibre Channel technology and is dedicated to making the transition to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel and FCoE technology as seamless as possible for its data center customers, while maintaining key capabilities, such as virtual machine migration."

The demonstration at this week's Cisco Networkers event showcases NPIV supported virtual machine migration across virtual server environments between differing network speeds and protocols. The demonstration includes the Emulex LightPulse(r) 8Gb/s LPe12000 and 4Gb/s LPe11000 families with Virtual HBA technology based on industry-standard NPIV, and an Emulex FCoE CNA, connected to leading fabric switches. Additionally, Emulex CNAs are also featured in a FCoE Technology demonstration in the Nuova booth #E5.

"Teaming with Emulex to showcase the benefits of FCoE reinforces the strong ecosystem support for this compelling next generation datacenter I/O consolidation technology," said Soni Jiandani, chief marketing officer, Nuova Systems. "FCoE is key to providing our mutual customers with products designed to enable deployment of LAN and SAN connectivity on servers while lowering cabling, power and cooling expenses. We will continue working closely with Emulex to drive data center convergence with expanded SAN connectivity solutions that leverage existing management tools."

"This demonstration is unique in that it provides a glimpse into the future of the data center and the benefits 8Gb/s Fibre Channel and FCoE provide to end users," said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst, Taneja Group. "As enterprises begin upgrading to faster speeds, the ability to migrate virtual machines from 4Gb/s HBAs to 8Gb/s HBAs will be a necessity, and Emulex has proven this ability with today's demonstration and gone a step further by demonstrating this capability within FCoE as well."

As a leader in NPIV technology and products, Emulex is again the first to demonstrate NPIV capabilities with emerging 8Gb/s Fibre Channel and FCoE technologies. FCoE is designed to provide an efficient storage protocol for use on a consolidated Ethernet fabric within the data center. The end user benefits associated with FCoE include consolidated management and connectivity, which will lower operating costs and protect customers' existing Fibre Channel infrastructure investments.

Emulex is demonstrating these new capabilities at this week's Cisco Networkers in Barcelona, Spain, January 21-24, in booth #E2.