Emulex Offers 10GBASE-T Connectivity for its OneConnect™ UCNAs

COSTA MESA, Calif.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced the availability of 10GBASE-T adapters as part of its next-generation Emulex OneConnect™ 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) Universal Converged Network Adapter (UNCA) family, providing 10GbE connectivity over twisted pair cables, reducing deployment costs, increasing deployment simplicity and delivering investment protection. The OCe11102-NT NIC and OCe11102-IT iSCSI adapters are ideally suited for data centers that are using twisted pair cabling and are transitioning from 1GbE to 10GbE infrastructure. For customers deploying 10GbE in their data centers today, the ability to use existing 10GBASE-T Cat 6a cabling versus optical cabling makes 10GbE performance less cost prohibitive, yielding a 37% savings.

“In today’s data center networks, traffic is exploding and 10GBASE-T provides one of the best low cost infrastructure options. By combining our high performance 10GBASE-T switches, such as the BlackDiamond 8800 and Summit X650, with Emulex's new UCNAs, customers can more easily deploy their 10GbE networks.”

"By expanding our 10GbE offerings with 10GBASE-T solutions, we're now delivering 10x the performance at a fraction of the price of ten 1GbE NICs, lowering overall cost of deployment for 10GbE networking," said Shaun Walsh, vice president of marketing, Emulex. "Combined with solutions from our ecosystem partners, 10GBASE-T is now a reality and we anticipate it will contribute to the rapid acceleration of 10GbE market adoption."

The OCe11102-NT NIC and OCe11102-IT iSCSI adapters include the following benefits and features:

Reduced Deployment Cost: With 10GBASE-T, Emulex is delivering 10GbE performance at half the cost per Gigabit of deploying 1GbE, including fewer switches, cables and adapters. Additionally, customers will receive power savings using fewer links.
Deployment Simplicity: Using industry-standard twisted pair cables, OCe11102-NT and OCe11102-IT adapters can be used with Cat 6 and Cat 6a network cabling already deployed in data centers today, and are backwards compatible with existing 1GbE Ethernet networks.
Optimized for Virtualized Environments: Emulex's Universal Multi-Channel (UMC) capabilities enable IT managers to have switch independent NIC partitioning that enables multiple PCI functions for each OneConnect 10GbE adapter port, which can then be assigned to optimize virtual server deployments. A dual-port OneConnect 10GBASE-T adapter provides eight logical NICs, allowing the replacement of two quad-port 1GbE NICs with a single, lower cost 10GBASE-T card.
iSCSI over Data Center Bridging (DCB): Emulex's Enterprise iSCSI technology supports IEEE DCB standards that ensure consistent iSCSI performance over a converged, lossless Ethernet network. Using DCB, Emulex iSCSI adapters support bandwidth allocation between network and storage traffic groups to optimize use of a high-performance 10GbE infrastructure. For customers still using iSCSI over 1GbE, the OCe11102-IT adapter future-proofs deployments, making them 10GbE ready at a similar cost to 1GbE iSCSI HBAs.
Manageable I/O: By sharing a single driver model, Emulex I/O solutions can be controlled, configured and managed from a single console using OneCommand™ Manager. Consolidated management capabilities enable enterprise scalability with time-saving features that provide more than twice the adapter management functionality and take half the time to install and manage compared to other I/O solutions¹. In addition, the OneCommand™ Manager plug-in for VMware vCenter™ lets users manage Emulex adapters directly from the vCenter console for reduced complexity and is the only adapter that integrates with VMware management tools.

The Emulex 10GBASE-T OCe11102-NT NICs ($882 MSRP) and OCe11102-IT iSCSI adapters ($1049 MSRP) are available now.

Supporting Quotes:

"The 1GbE-10GbE transition is at an inflection point and 10GBASE-T's broad interoperability and ability to leverage existing data center cabling lowers the cost of 10GbE and accelerates adoption this year and next," said Ed Chapman, vice president of Business Development, Arista Networks. "Emulex and Arista Networks' support of 10GBASE-T connectivity makes 10GbE a reality for data centers."

“As a pioneer in 10GBASE-T technology, Extreme Networks is pleased to work with Emulex as they bring cost effective 10GBASE-T connectivity solutions to market, completing the ecosystem to the server," said Shehzad Merchant, vice president of technology, Extreme Networks. "In today’s data center networks, traffic is exploding and 10GBASE-T provides one of the best low cost infrastructure options. By combining our high performance 10GBASE-T switches, such as the BlackDiamond 8800 and Summit X650, with Emulex's new UCNAs, customers can more easily deploy their 10GbE networks.”

"Reducing cabling complexity is a huge part of the drive towards data center consolidation today and 10GBASE-T simplifies the physical infrastructure, lowering costs and increasing operational efficiency," said Tom Walsh, Director - Copper Products, Panduit. "Emulex's new 10GBASE-T cards offer a tenfold speed increase and interoperability with Cat6/6a cabling, which is necessary to ensure more customers can use the infrastructure they already have, which remains a data center priority."

"10GBASE-T represents a technology inflection point in the 10GbE market that will spur adoption in the volume rack server market," said Seamus Crehan, president, Crehan Research. "As Emulex and others ship 10GBASE-T adapters, we predict that adoption will start to pick up during the first half of 2012, driven by price, performance and next-generation server shipments."

1. Based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing

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Read the Emulex Labs blog: “Emulex OneConnect Twisted Sisters: Announcing the new OCe11102-T Adapters”

Download the ‘10GBASE-T vs. GbE Cost Comparison’ whitepaper

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About Emulex

Emulex, the leader in converged networking solutions, provides enterprise-class connectivity for servers, networks and storage devices within the data center. The Company's product portfolio of Fibre Channel host bus adapters, network interface cards, converged network adapters, controllers, embedded bridges and switches, and connectivity management software are proven, tested and trusted by the world's largest and most demanding IT environments. Emulex solutions are used and offered by the industry's leading server and storage OEMs including, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Huawei, IBM, NEC, NetApp and Oracle. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. More information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) is available at www.Emulex.com.

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“Safe Harbor” Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements include, among other matters, statements concerning Emulex’s acquisition of ServerEngines Corporation, including anticipated benefits expected from the acquisition, expected impact on Emulex’s results of operations and financial condition, and expected market opportunities; Emulex’s business outlook, as well as expectations of other future events and future performance. Emulex wishes to caution readers that a number of significant factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Those factors include among others, the anticipated benefits of the combined companies may not be achieved, the combined operations may not be successfully integrated in a timely manner, if at all, and other risks inherent in acquisitions of businesses, including unanticipated costs and expenditures, potential changes in relationships with strategic partners, potential contractual or intellectual property issues, and potential accounting charges and write-downs; as well as changes in economic and industry conditions and the effects of ongoing global economic uncertainty, changes in end user demand for technology solutions; the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire Emulex; Emulex’s dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, or decrease or delays in orders by, any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the rapidly changing nature of technology, evolving industry standards and frequent introductions of new products and enhancements by competitors; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; slower than expected growth of the storage networking market or the failure of Emulex’s Original Equipment Manufacturer (“OEM”) customers to successfully incorporate Emulex products into their systems; delays in product development; the highly competitive nature of the markets for Emulex’s products; Emulex’s ability to gain market acceptance for its products; any inadequacy of Emulex’s intellectual property protection or the potential for third-party claims of infringement; Emulex’s ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; and Emulex’s reliance on third-party suppliers. These and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are also discussed in Emulex’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q. Statements in this release are based on current expectations and, except as required by law, Emulex undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements for any reason. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.