3Leaf Systems (www.3leafsystems.com), a provider of next-generation virtualization solutions for enterprise data centers, today announced that it is working with Emulex Corporation to deliver next-generation server virtualization solutions. 3Leaf will leverage Emulex 4Gb/s LightPulse Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), which enable Fibre Channel I/O virtualization on the 3Leaf V-8000 Virtual I/O Server. The resulting solution is both cost-effective and flexible, and provides higher scalability and availability than traditional data center infrastructure solutions for customers’ existing storage resources.

Announced in early May, the 3Leaf V-8000 virtualizes the I/O for a pool of commodity servers, maximizing server resource utilization and scalability, speeding up the deployment and provisioning of new servers, and providing high availability and centralized management while reducing both capital and operating costs. The attached pool of servers connects to the 3Leaf V-8000 through a high-speed fabric backbone, with the 3Leaf V-8000 providing the physical connections to storage and networking, while the Emulex 4Gb/s LightPulse HBAs provide the interface within the storage network.

Emulex HBAs and drivers provide virtualized storage connectivity utilizing Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBA Technology, which supports industry-standard N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV). Emulex’s industry-leading technology allows multiple logical Fibre Channel initiators to share a single physical port. Using Emulex’s LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, the 3Leaf V-8000 can support multiple virtual HBA ports on each physical port, which greatly increases the efficiency, flexibility, and scalability of storage resources. In addition, Emulex HBAs are able to identify the LUNs that are zoned for each virtual HBA, allowing the 3Leaf multi-pathing software to discover redundant storage paths. This facilitates load balancing and redundancy, delivering mainframe-class availability.

“Emulex continues to take a leadership position in working with other vendors, such as 3Leaf, to promote the adoption of server and storage virtualization,” said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corporation. “The combination of Emulex’s award-winning HBAs and 3Leaf’s V-8000 Virtual I/O Server technology uniquely position our companies to jointly address the requirements of today’s enterprise data center and solve its most challenging IT issues.”

“We are excited to join forces with Emulex, a leader in SAN connectivity and data center virtualization,” stated Bob Quinn, CEO of 3Leaf Systems. “High availability and scalability are vital to our customers and are key to our strategy of providing mainframe-class features on commodity servers while significantly reducing costs. Through this partnership, we are confident that we will continue to offer customers cost-effective server virtualization solutions that increase the scalability and availability of their existing heterogeneous resources.”