QLogic: Software FCoE will not be used by the data center

How does a hardware FCoE vendor view Intel's software FCoE? QLogic Host Solution Group, European http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/32064.html "> Marketing director Henrik Hansen interviewed him about his views.

Intel has recently released an open FCoE software stack that enables users to send and receive information to FC access to the storage system without the use of FCoE CNA (converged network adapters) CNA is a special Ethernet interface card with FCOE capabilities.

CNA vendors generally assume that the server should run the application and unload the storage I/O processing to the outer cordon.

As a result, this interview is mainly about QLogic's views on the Intel FCoE software stack, and one of the general messages he delivers is clear: software FCoE will not be used by the datacenter.

Question: What are the main differences Intel has with the CNA of the Open FCoE software for standard Ethernet NICs and QLogic FCoE functions?

Henrik Hansen: Host systems with Intel or NIC (running FCoE software initiators) are limited in scalability because the storage load consumes 70% of the CPU resources, leaving only a small portion of the resources left to the application process or virtual machine.

Instead, CNA unloads FCoE to the adapter, which requires the 4%~10% CPU to handle the same storage workload. FCoE software initiators limit operating system support (currently available only for Linux), Microsoft has not yet commented on the support timeframe, and the way in which management procedures and operating system Exchange protocols are handled is questionable. Now that the Software launcher is not implemented, you must first change the software architecture supported by the management program.

Software initiators need years of development and real-world use before they are ready for enterprise deployments: Intel has only 5 qualified suppliers and QLogic has 80 qualified suppliers with thousands of products.

Compared to Intel's limited VLAN separation, QLogic supports OEM separation (HP Flex-10, IBM virtual Fabric adapter, and QLogic own npar with embedded 2-tier switching) including the quality of service in some networks, In addition, the application performance is improved.

Question: Hardware CNA manufacturers say they can also provide better management capabilities, so what do you think the impact of Intel FCoE software will have on the storage network market?

Henrik Hansen:qlogic does not believe that data center administrators will trust enterprise storage to apply an unproven technology that only obtains the limited recognition of storage vendors. Intel's software FCoE will take years to gain universal storage eligibility and support for operating systems and management programs. Most OEM vendors support a validated storage driver stack, which actually poses a certain impediment to the acceptance of software initiators.

Question: With multi-core x86 processors, do you also need to use a dedicated FCoE engine on CNA instead of a standard Ethernet NIC?

Henrik Hansen: The increasing density of virtual machines (VMS) will have a significant impact on servers trying to run software initiators while running virtual machines. To effectively extend these servers, the CPU (cycle) must be reserved for the management program, not for processing storage I/O.

Question: Since the software iSCSI initiators are now much more than the number of iSCSI-enabled Ethernet interface card initiators, will the FCoE market follow iSCSI, and most server FC ports will be driven by software FCoE code stacks rather than CNA?

The Henrik HANSEN:ISCSI launcher is mainly used by small and medium enterprises (SMB), and its reliability is not as important as the enterprise storage market.

Now the data center is undergoing a new "fission", the fuse is virtualization and integration. Using the FCoE software Launcher to achieve both will result in insufficient CPU resources and limit the scalability of the virtual machines, as well as the throughput requirements for high application storage requirements.

To effectively extend the new split, CPU resources will be better used to service virtual machines and hard disks, rather than processing I/O.