The BridgeX is a stateless system where the Mellanox network and storage driver encapsulate Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) or Ethernet packets inside InfiniBand packets. Where an iSCSI-based system needs to terminate the IP session, unwrap the IP from the SCSI data and rewrap it in FCP, BridgeX just has to peel off the InfiniBand wrapper.
ConnectX is a 10-Gbps card as well, so the server can take advantage of Mellanox's FCoE storage drivers to connect to an FCoE switch like Cisco's Nexus 5000 or Brocade's 8000, or use Mellanox's BridgeX to gateway FCoE traffic to a Fibre Channel switch. When used this way, BridgeX emulates N-Ports to the Fibre Channel switch looking like a series of Fibre Channel HBAs. However, unlike an FCoE switch, BridgeX doesn't provide naming or other fabric services.
While Xsigo uses InfiniBand, its I/O Director isn't an InfiniBand-to-Ethernet and Fibre Channel bridge, but instead uses InfiniBand as the connection media to Gigabit and 10-Gbps Ethernet, and to Fibre Channel modules in the I/O Director. Host systems connect to the 24 20-Gbps InfiniBand ports, but rather than iSER or other InfiniBand drivers, they use Ethernet drivers for the Ethernet ports. Because the Fibre Channel modules use QLogic silicon, QLogic's SANsurfer and Fibre Channel drivers also let admins manage virtual HBAs with SAN management tools. The I/O Director has 15 slots for two-port 4-Gbps Fibre Channel, four-port Gigabit, and 10-Gbps Ethernet modules. Organizations that need higher server-to-I/O densities can use InfiniBand switches between servers and the I/O Director to connect hundreds of servers to a single I/O Director.
Betting against Ethernet has historically been a good way to lose money -- see Token Ring and ATM LANs, for example -- and all three of the vendors using InfiniBand as part of their products are integrating 10-Gbps Ethernet into their portfolios. Mellanox's road map is pretty clear; Voltaire is leveraging its InfiniBand expertise to build high-port-count, low-latency 10-Gbps switches; and Xsigo has been hinting that a future version of I/O Director will use 10-Gbps Ethernet instead of InfiniBand.
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