ALISO VIEJO, Calif., March 21, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- QLogic (Nasdaq:QLGC) furthers its leadership position in high-performance data center connectivity, revolutionizing enterprise application performance with the release of the QLogic® FabricCache™ 10000 Series adapter. The first product based on the company's breakthrough Mt. Rainier technology, FabricCache combines QLogic's market-leading Fibre Channel adapter, intelligent caching and I/O management with connectivity to a server-based PCIe® flash card. FabricCache is exceptionally simple to deploy and manage and transforms single-server, captive cache into a shared, performance-enhancing resource for a wide range of enterprise applications that rely on SAN storage.
Shared cache unleashes performance for clustered and virtualized applications in the enterprise
Clustered and highly virtualized servers continue to expand their footprint in the data center, generating large numbers of highly randomized IOPs and producing some of the most performance-challenged environments in the enterprise. FabricCache unleashes the power of server-based caching and defines a new solution category for enterprise application acceleration, transparently pooling individual server cache across multiple, physical servers. All servers equipped with FabricCache adapters access, share and utilize the combined cache of all FabricCache adapters in a cluster. This approach delivers new levels of scalable performance for the most demanding mission-critical applications in the data center, dramatically lowering latency and increasing throughput for clustered and virtualized applications, including database and enterprise collaboration.
FabricCache adapters enable hypervisor-transparent caching of SAN storage in highly virtualized, clustered environments. During live virtual machine (VM) migration between physical servers, FabricCache ensures the shared cache stays warm, keeping performance high and supporting critical features such as automated VM and workload balancing across clustered servers. Since only one active copy of cache exists for any SAN LUN, FabricCache adapters guarantee cache coherence and maximize utilization of server-based flash capacity. FabricCache also ensures all cached data is synchronized with SAN storage, maintaining existing data protection and compliance policies.
"QLogic has a rich heritage of delivering innovative, high-performance data center connectivity solutions to our customers and partners," said Simon Biddiscombe, president and chief executive officer, QLogic. "QLogic possesses the unique combination of industry experience, installed base in the enterprise, global customer relationships, technology assets and unmatched R&D talent needed to define and bring to market game-changing, performance-enhancing solutions such as FabricCache."
A dramatically simpler solution: transparent, adapter-based caching that lowers TCO
FabricCache is unlike alternative offerings that require separate installation, management and maintenance of server-based software and drivers for the I/O adapter, PCIe flash card and caching. Intelligent cache processing, pooling and clustering are completely offloaded from the server to dedicated cache processing hardware on the FabricCache adapter.
FabricCache uses just a single standard adapter driver per OS, the same QLogic field-proven adapter driver stack that has shipped with more than 13 million Fibre Channel ports. The FabricCache adapter appears logically to the server as a single QLogic HBA, resulting in a simpler solution that consumes no additional server resources and is completely application-transparent, as well as infrastructure and storage subsystem-agnostic. FabricCache integrates seamlessly into current enterprise server and infrastructure environments, simplifying deployment and management, thereby reducing total cost of ownership.
Greater ROI: supercharge performance for more applications using existing infrastructure
The FabricCache single-driver approach, combined with adapter-based cache processing, eliminates the need to purchase and deploy additional caching software, reducing operational and capital expenditures. FabricCache extends server-based caching to more performance-challenged environments in the enterprise, enabling a greater number of mission-critical applications to do more work. Clustered cache eliminates redundant traffic on the SAN, bringing new levels of performance to an existing infrastructure, extending the life of current equipment. As a result, FabricCache changes the economics of server-based caching, delivering significantly higher value with less complexity than currently available performance acceleration offerings.
"The FabricCache 10000 Series is just the beginning of new and highly differentiated solutions to come from QLogic's groundbreaking Mt. Rainier technology," said Shishir Shah, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Solutions Group, QLogic. "We are deeply engaged with several strategic enterprise application partners and major OEMs and look forward to bringing additional breakthrough solutions such as FabricCache to market."
A new era of enterprise application performance acceleration for SANs
Compatible with the vast majority of SANs deployed today, the dual port 8Gb Fibre Channel FabricCache QLE10000 adapter comes bundled with an enterprise ultra-low latency, high-performance SLC PCIe flash card. FabricCache will be available through QLogic's Authorized Channel Partners by the end of March, 2013. QLogic's new Advanced Solutions Partners are FabricCache-certified resellers who have the skills and training to identify customer requirements, along with the tools and expertise to support customized FabricCache installations. For the QLogic Advanced Solutions Partner nearest you, and to learn more about the performance and unique benefits of FabricCache adapters, please visit www.qlogic.com.
Industry Analyst quotes:
"QLogic's FabricCache brings a valuable contribution to the problem of where to add flash-cache within a storage area network," said David Floyer, CTO and co-founder of Wikibon. "By placing the cache in the fabric, and supporting it with a standard Fibre Channel HBA driver, the caching becomes transparent to the application host system and storage system. For FC SAN environments this is a simpler and lower cost implementation to install, manage and grow."
"Today's server-based caching solutions are beginning to break down the I/O performance gap between high performance servers and slower, mechanical, disk-based arrays. QLogic's FabricCache QLE10000 adapter redefines server-based caching with the industry's first caching SAN adapter that makes SSDs a shared SAN resource," said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst of Taneja Group. "Solutions like the QLE10000 adapter will finally enable clustered enterprise applications to take advantage of SSD performance acceleration typically found only in individual servers. QLogic has a great opportunity to grow their market with the potential FabricCache creates."
"Virtualization is the default in today's data center with virtualized workloads eclipsing physical workloads. Nearly 91 million VMs are going to be deployed between now and 2016 and we are also seeing the rise of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), a market which is forecasted to grow at a 14% 5 year CAGR," said Gary Chen, research manager, Cloud and Virtualization System Software at IDC, a leading market research firm. "I/O performance is the most difficult area for virtualization, especially as you start dealing with high VM densities, Tier-1 workloads, and VDI which can create scenarios like boot storms that really pressure I/O subsystems. Solutions that can address these I/O challenges using technologies like shareable server side caching, such as QLogic's FabricCache QLE10000, are likely to be well received in the industry."
Customer quotes:
"We initially ran the FabricCache QLE10000 adapter through basic connectivity, multi-pathing, and failover tests to see how it behaved in our system. Installation was straightforward, simple, and the FabricCache QLE10000 adapter appeared to our network as just another adapter, seamlessly integrating into our SAN," said Jason Reid, CTO at Carrenza, an award-winning Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider in the UK. "Further performance testing on VMware virtual machines running Microsoft SQL clusters showed a 3x performance gain in mixed read/write environments, including significant I/O demand offload to our HP 3PAR array, enabling significant write performance improvements. The FabricCache QLE10000 adapter's transparent caching enabled uninterrupted recovery to potential failures, with performance enhancements that support the QoS and SLA guarantees our customers demand."
"At Constant Contact, we are continually looking for solutions that improve the speed, performance, and reliability of our technology infrastructure. This is critical to serving our more than 500,000 small business customers that in 2012 alone sent more than 45 billion emails to better engage with their donors, prospects, and customers," said Stefan Piesche, CTO of Constant Contact. "The beta test of Mt. Rainier proved very capable in meeting those needs, providing us with the ability to scale our infrastructure to meet the growing needs of our customer base without sacrificing a seamless user experience. We are looking forward to building upon our partnership with QLogic that has been a win-win for both organizations for more than five years."
Advanced Solutions Partner quotes:
"FabricCache is a groundbreaking solution that addresses some of the most performance-challenged areas of the data center," said Steve Bishop, CTO at VeriStor, an inaugural QLogic Advanced Solutions Partner. "With this technology, QLogic is empowering our clients to get more out of their existing infrastructure through a simplified, scalable and high-performance solution for accelerating clustered database applications. In turn, we see additional revenue opportunities from both current customers as well as new prospects looking to take advantage of the latest solid-state caching technologies. It's a win-win across the board."
"QLogic has developed outstanding enablement programs so Advanced Solutions Partners can take full advantage of the opportunities created by a disruptive solution like FabricCache," said Gautam Shah, CEO Colfax International, an inaugural QLogic Advanced Solutions Partner. "By placing enterprise caching in the SAN fabric via QLogic's Fibre Channel adapter and standard HBA driver, you get a simple, highly reliable performance accelerator that's transparent to the application and the SAN. This is a great solution for our customers and generates incremental, long-term revenue opportunities for Colfax."
Technology Partner quotes:
"SQL Server 2012 gives customers breakthrough performance," said Luis Daniel Soto Maldonado, director, Microsoft server and tools marketing. "QLogic's new FabricCache addresses performance at the SAN adapter level to help customers increase SAN caching and storage performance. QLogic couples PCIe flash caching technology with Fibre Channel adapters and utilizes existing software drivers and management framework. In addition to SQL Server's enterprise-class data protection and built-in performance, customers can add the FabricCache QLE10000 caching SAN adapter to increase storage performance."
"The new FabricCache QLE10000 caching SAN adapter utilizes QLogic's proven driver stack and integrated management to Hitachi storage, which makes it easy for our customers to deploy," said Fred Huang, Hitachi Converged Platform CTO. "The seamless integration of the shared cache solution to Hitachi's mission-critical arrays delivers a flexible level of powerful I/O acceleration/performance to a wide range of applications."
"QLogic brings transparent, server-based SAN caching to a shared-resource environment and delivers scalable performance to I/O-hungry applications," said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "FabricCache QLE10000 caching SAN adapters enable caching of SAN storage in VMware vSphere® environments. This enables cache to stay warm during live migration across physical servers, allowing IT experts to build clustered virtualization platforms that scale without compromising performance."
"The QLogic FabricCache QLE10000 caching SAN adapter complements NetApp's server flash strategy by providing application acceleration closest to the application – in the server," said Tim Russell, vice president, Data Lifecycle Ecosystem Group, NetApp. "The consolidated SSD and Fibre Channel adapter solution unleashes the performance of the most demanding applications."
QLogic – the Ultimate in Performance
QLogic (Nasdaq:QLGC) is a global leader and technology innovator in high performance networking, including adapters, switches and ASICs. Leading OEMs and channel partners worldwide rely on QLogic products for their data, storage and server networking solutions. For more information, visit www.qlogic.com.
Disclaimer – Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains statements relating to future results of the company (including certain beliefs and projections regarding business and market trends) that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in the forward-looking statements. The company advises readers that these potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: unfavorable economic conditions; potential fluctuations in operating results; gross margins that may vary over time; the stock price of the company may be volatile; the company's dependence on the networking markets served; the ability to maintain and gain market or industry acceptance of the company's products; the company's dependence on a small number of customers; the company's ability to compete effectively with other companies; the complexity of the company's products; declining average unit sales prices of comparable products; the company's dependence on sole source and limited source suppliers; the company's dependence on relationships with certain third-party subcontractors and contract manufacturers; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; sales fluctuations arising from customer transitions to new products; seasonal fluctuations and uneven sales patterns in orders from customers; a reduction in sales efforts by current distributors; changes in the company's tax provisions or adverse outcomes resulting from examination of its income tax returns; international economic, currency, regulatory, political and other risks; facilities of the company and its suppliers and customers are located in areas subject to natural disasters; the ability to protect proprietary rights; the ability to satisfactorily resolve any infringement claims; uncertain benefits from strategic business combinations, acquisitions and divestitures; declines in the market value of the company's marketable securities; changes in and compliance with regulations; difficulties in transitioning to smaller geometry process technologies; the use of "open source" software in the company's products; and security system risks, data protection breaches and cyber-attacks.
More detailed information on these and additional factors which could affect the company's operating and financial results are described in the company's Forms 10-K, 10-Q and other reports filed, or to be filed, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company urges all interested parties to read these reports to gain a better understanding of the business and other risks that the company faces. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made only as of the date hereof, and the company does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
QLogic and the QLogic logo are registered trademarks of QLogic Corporation. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of the companies with which they are associated. VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.