QLogic 8200 Series The Value of Full Hardware Offload in a Converged Ethernet Environment - Manual (Page 6)

hSG-WP10004 SN0330923-00 rev. B 09/11 6
White PaPer
approach versus software initiators, which only offer cost savings.
Despite the fact that cost is an important factor in the adoption of FCoe,
a successful implementation is not possible if performance and reliability
suffer materially as a consequence. Outside of price, new FCoe software
initiators and partial offload solutions will have a difficult time competing
with full offload technology.
With the company’s latest hardware release, QLogic enters its third
generation of Converged Network adapters, further demonstrating
its commitment to continuously delivering value and innovation. as
enterprise application customers strive to achieve density and resource
utilization objectives, high i/O performance will emerge as a requirement.
Virtualization, a target application for FCoe, will require CPU horsepower to
efficiently scale VMs. Furthermore, the addition of a virtualization layer can
add overhead, which will degrade i/O performance and eliminate additional
virtualization benefits. With the QLogic 8200 Series Converged Network
adapter, the Fibre Channel driver stack is processed by the adapter.
Offloading Fibre Channel processing means that more CPU resources can
be used to support more VMs, providing greater cost savings and rOi for
virtualized environments. the QLogic 8200 Series Converged Network
adapter is uniquely positioned to remove performance barriers for the
virtualization of transactional enterprise applications.
Flexibility is another important factor in an FCoe solution. the QLogic
8200 Series Converged Network adapter supports both iSCSi with full
tCP offload and 10Gb ethernet NiC features with stateless offload, further
allowing the host CPU to be used for application and virtualization scaling.
in addition, QLogic is currently the only vendor to support NiC, FCoe, and
iSCSi protocols concurrently, giving you the opportunity to choose strategic,
long-term, and flexible solutions based on your it needs.
along with scalability, performance, and offload feature benefits provided
over software initiators, QLogic Converged Network adapters offer
additional operational efficiencies, such as eliminating PCi bus bottlenecks,
ensuring data integrity with enhanced data delivery and error recoverability
capabilities, a mature battle-hardened driver, and the largest interoperability
base in the industry.
FCoe applications that move significant amounts of data or information
systems that process large files will require solutions that free up CPU
resources and increase bandwidth and performance. Software initiators
lack maturity for enterprise applications and it will take years of qualification
testing to establish the elevated levels set by QLogic. Meanwhile, the
QLogic 8200 Series Converged Network adapter is uniquely positioned to
remove the existing barriers of a software initiator.