EmulexToday Emulex announced the general availability of their new OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) Product Family, specifically the OCe10102-I 10Gb/s Ethernet iSCSI Adapter and OCe10102-N 10Gb/s Ethernet Adapter are very interesting.

The Emulex OneConnect UCNA is a single-chip, high performance 10Gb/s Ethernet adapter that provides connectivity for network and storage traffic over one multi-function server adapter. Unlike first generation CNAs that only provide FCoE convergence, the Emulex OneConnect UCNA technology provides optimized performance for TCP/IP, FCoE and iSCSI protocols.

The OneConnect UCNA comes in three different versions (N, I and F):

  • OCe10102-N: 10Gb Ethernet Adapter;
  • OCe10102-I: 10Gb iSCSI Adapter;
  • OCe10102-F: 10Gb FCoE  Adapter.

The 10Gb/s capacity and the performance optimization for TCP/IP and iSCSI makes these adapters very interesting for virtualization purposes because it is possible to leverage the full capacity of a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network by converging multiple protocols for networking and storage.

With these new adapters it is possible to save up to 28% savings on adapters and switch ports, up to 80% on cables and up to 40% savings on power and cooling. It maximizes server virtualization because of offloading multiple protocols which optimizes server performance and results in up to 20% more VMs per virtualised server.

It does not require a whole new network infrastructure because it builds on existing Fibre Channel and iSCSI investments and thereby protects existing infrastructure investments.