Today, at Mobile World Congress, QLogic Inc. introduces its new line of Ethernet controllers, the QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series. This new series will enable 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100Gb Ethernet (100GbE)-based network connectivity on a single high-performance ASIC. QLogic states that their new FastLinQ 45000 Series is both highly flexible and extensible and are specifically designed to address the issues of telco, enterprise, managed service provider (MSP), cloud and storage markets.
Today, at Mobile World Congress, QLogic Inc. introduces its new line of Ethernet controllers, the QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series. This new series will enable 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100Gb Ethernet (100GbE)-based network connectivity on a single high-performance ASIC. QLogic states that their new FastLinQ 45000 Series is both highly flexible and extensible and are specifically designed to address the issues of telco, enterprise, managed service provider (MSP), cloud and storage markets.
As more and more data centers look to shift from 10GbE to 25GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE over the next few years, QLogic is attempting to be ahead of the curve and take full advantage of this shift when it happens. The new QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series aims to delivers low latency, low CPU utilization, and high performance all while delivering an expansive set of features and protocols to IT administrators. QLogic goes on to state that the combination of reduced demand on CPUs through hardware offloads and the highest bandwidth available its new series will maximize server utilization while helping to eliminate network congestion.
Key benefits include:
- Improved Server Utilization:
- QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series solutions provide hardware offloaded protocol processing, which results in a significant reduction of the CPU burden and improves overall server efficiency. Hardware-offloaded protocol support includes:
- Broad multi-protocol Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) interoperability, with CPU offload for RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), RoCEv2 and Internet wide area RDMA protocol (iWARP), delivering the first truly universal RDMA Network Interface Card (RNIC).
- Hardened storage protocol interoperability, with CPU offload for iSCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fabrics, provides a Converged Network Adapter (CNA) solution that supports not only traditional Storage Area Network (SAN) connectivity, but also newer scale-out storage solutions that are based on object and file.
- QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series solutions provide hardware offloaded protocol processing, which results in a significant reduction of the CPU burden and improves overall server efficiency. Hardware-offloaded protocol support includes:
- Increased Scalability for Virtual Servers and Networks:
- Advanced Network Interface Card (NIC) virtualization capabilities with support for Multi-queue, NIC partitioning (NPAR) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), enables faster performance in virtualized environments and tenant consolidation, which requires the use of fewer physical ports while maintaining quality of service (QoS) and service-level agreements (SLAs).
- Support for Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) supports network function virtualization (NFV), which enables and accelerates virtual network function (VNF) applications and provides flexible deployment of server nodes in data center carrier networks.
- Extensive overlay networking (tunneling) capabilities with stateless offload support for network virtualization using Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) and Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE). These capabilities optimize performance while reducing the cost of network encapsulation for virtualized workloads and hybrid cloud deployments.
- Efficient Administration:
- Optimized for software-defined networking (SDN) and OpenStack deployments, leveraging NPAR, SR-IOV, tunneling offloads, DPDK support and broad storage protocol integration.
- The QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series’ expansive set of features and protocols are integrated into the QLogic QConvergeConsole (QCC), which simplifies deployment, diagnostics and management from a single-pane-of-glass, streamlining storage and networking I/O connectivity orchestration.
Availability
The QLogic FastLinQ 45000 Series of controllers and adapters are expected to be available and shipping in multiple form factors in the first quarter of this year. QLogic will be showcasing its new technology at HPE’s booth (Hall 3, 3A20) at the Mobile World Conference.
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