Blade, Emulex, NetApp Team on FCOE

ORLANDO, Fla. -- BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT) announced today that it is teaming with Emulex Corp. and NetApp at Storage Networking World to showcase the industrys first public demonstration of a blade server-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) unified fabric. The demonstration shows that the “loss-less” I/O required to carry Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) storage traffic within blade architectures is now possible using products based on the emerging standards for Converged Enhanced Ethernet™ (CEE), an enhanced version of Ethernet for data centers.

BLADE is working closely with Emulex and NetApp to deliver FCoE products that consolidate the number of networks in tomorrow's data centers. The demonstration shows that BLADE’s CEE-capable 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, Emulex’s Converged Network Adapter products and NetApp Ethernet storage provide the loss-less I/O necessary to support FCoE in a blade server environment. BLADE is a pioneer in developing advanced high-performance Ethernet I/O infrastructure products and its CEE-capable switching products will enable widespread adoption of FCoE SANs and also greatly enhance Ethernet in the data center across a wide range of traffic types from networking and storage to clustering.

“FCoE is a rapidly evolving T11.3 standard to transport Fibre Channel storage data over reliable Ethernet networks and enable the convergence of storage, networking and clustering onto a single, cost-effective fabric,” said Mark Hudson, Chief Marketing Officer at BLADE Network Technologies. “BLADE, Emulex and NetApp have teamed up to ensure that data centers deploying FCoE as part of a unified data center I/O strategy can realize key benefits, such as increased performance, greater data center density, lower capital and maintenance costs and lower energy and cooling costs, ultimately resulting in a lower carbon footprint.”

Blade Network Technologies Inc.