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Emulex Provides 10Gb Ethernet Virtual Fabric Adapter 5 for New Lenovo Servers
[December 15, 2014]

Emulex Provides 10Gb Ethernet Virtual Fabric Adapter 5 for New Lenovo Servers


Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced new Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter 5 (VFA5) technology for the new Lenovo (News - Alert) servers, based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 v3 product families. The new Flex System CN4058S 8-port 10Gb VFA and CN4052 2-port 10Gb VFA are designed to reduce cost and complexity, increase performance, accelerate data, and support enterprise workloads such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), big data analytics, database management and emerging compute architectures.

"We are in the midst of an evolution across the server, networking and storage industries as virtualization, software-defined networking, big data analytics, and the move to public, private and hybrid cloud environments continues to put pressure on networks to be faster and more agile, requiring workload optimized I/O to become of paramount importance," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing, Emulex. "New Emulex VFA5 technology for the Flex System server family addresses these workload requirements with improved server utilization, increased small packet performance and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) support, delivering application and storage acceleration for next generation data center infrastructures."

"The new Flex System family provides the security, efficiency and reliability required for next generation enterprise data centers," said Jeff Howard, vice president, Flex System and BladeCenter, Lenovo. "Emulex VFA5 technology combined with the new Flex System accelerates IT workloads and increases data center efficiency across a wide range of I/O intensive enterprise, cloud and telco workloads."

Emulex VFA5 technology provides the following key benefits for next generation Flex System server customers:

  • Reducing Cost and Complexity: The Flex System CN4058S 8-port and CN4052 2-port VFA5 adapters are cost- and performance-optimized for integrated and converged infrastructures by offering a "triple play" of converged data, storage, and low latency RDMA networking on a common Ethernet fabric. This gives a flexible storage protocol option for running heterogeneous workloads on their increasingly converged infrastructures. The Flex System CN4058S and CN4052 VFA5 adapters deliver server power savings due to lower CPU usage, ranging from 50 watts to almost 100 watts per server vs. competing adapters1. These adapters also support Virtual Fabric Mode (vNIC1) and Switch Independent Mode (vNIC2), and now Unified Fabric Port (UFP).
  • Accelerating Data and Improving Performance: Flex System CN45058S and CN4052 VFA5 adapters support RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), which accelerates applications such as Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL Server when using Windows Server SMB Direct, delivering application and storage acceleration through faster I/O operations. Flex System VFA5 adapters include Emulex Virtual Network Exceleration™ (VNeX) technology which offloads the header encapsulation process of next generation overlay network protocols, simplifying virtual machine (VM) mobility and network scalability, while optimizing server performance when compared to adapters without offload capabilities. Emulex VNeX technology allows customers to maintain CPU utilization thresholds and reduce CPU usage fluctuations, while adding more workloads to each server in virtual networking environments.
  • Creating Workload and Storage Connectivity Flexibility: Lenovo VFA5 adapters deliver up to a 4x boost in small packet network performance1, vs. previous generation adapters, which is critical to scale transaction-heavy and clustered applications and workloads such as telco, Web-scale and messaging environments. The Lenovo VFA5 adapters support FCoE offload, which accelerates storage protocol processing, and deliver up to 1.5 million I/O operations per second (IOPS), which is 2x better than previous generation adapters, enabling the server's processing resources to focus on applications and improve the server's performance1. The Lenovo VFA5 adapters also support iSCSI offload, providing performance that is superior to iSCSI solutions based on software initiators and standard ICs, and support TCIP/IP and iSCSI or FCoE offloads on the same port (i.e. concurrent storage). FoCE and iSCSI offloads are available through Feature on Demand (FoD), which allows customers to lower their costs by allowing them to initially purchase a NIC (News - Alert) and upgrade as their needs grow.
  1. Based on IT Brand Pulse OCe14000 Performance Test Report, July 2014



Additional Resources:

  • Read our blog on today's news in the Down to the Wire @Lenovo blog.
  • Learn more about Emulex solutions for Lenovo on this microsite and LinkedIn group.

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About Emulex

Emulex, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, provides hardware and software solutions for global networks that support enterprise, cloud, government and telecommunications. Emulex's products enable unrivaled end-to-end application visibility, optimization and acceleration. The Company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of ultra high-performance Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, have been designed into server and storage solutions from leading OEMs, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu (News - Alert), Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, and can be found in the data centers of nearly all of the Fortune 1000. Emulex's monitoring and management solutions, including its portfolio of network visibility and recording products, provide organizations with complete network performance management at speeds up to 100Gb Ethernet. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) please visit http://www.Emulex.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or changes to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. We wish to caution readers that actual future results could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors." Those factors and the factors listed below could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements:

  • faster than anticipated declines in the demand for storage networking and fiber channel and slower than expected growth of the converged networking market or the failure of our Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems;
  • the highly competitive nature of the markets for our products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions and the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market;
  • our dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers or the failure of our OEM customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems;
  • our reliance on a limited number of third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly, many of which are located outside of the United States;
  • the effect on our margins of rapid migration of technology and product substitution by customers, including transitions from application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions to boards for selected applications and higher-end to lower-end products, mezzanine card products or modular Local Area Network (LAN) on Motherboard (LOMs);
  • the non-linearity and variability in the level of our revenue resulting from the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of our customers;
  • the possibility that our goodwill could become impaired in the near term which would result in a non-cash charge and could adversely affect our reported GAAP operating results;
  • any inadequacy of our intellectual property protection or our ability to obtain necessary licenses or other intellectual property rights on commercially reasonable terms;
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  • that we may fail to realize the anticipated benefits from the acquisition of Endace Limited (Endace) on a timely basis or at all which could result in an impairment of assets or be unable to complete the integration of Endace's technology into our existing operations in a timely and efficient manner;
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  • changes in tax rates or legislation, accounting standards and other regulatory changes.

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