Fibrechannel.org

FCoE Interoperability Validated in Multi-Vendor Testing

San Francisco, Calif., — December 2, 2009 — The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), a non-profit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators and vendors, today announced the completion of its third FCoE Plugfest the week of November 16th at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

In collaboration with the FCIA, leading Fibre Channel vendors worked in concert to ensure interoperability for the technically stable FCoE standard. This year’s Plugfest provided a forum for testing the interactions between multi-vendor storage arrays and Converged Network Adapters (CNA) in a single FCoE environment including data center bridge exchange (DCBx) switches utilizing the FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) approved in the FCoE standard. Participating companies in the Plugfest included Brocade, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Fulcrum Microsystems, HP, IBM, Intel, JDSU, Mellanox, NetApp and QLogic.

“In addition to looking at Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) capable switches, this Plugfest incorporated multiple targets and diverse CNAs in PCI option card and blade form factors operating concurrently in a single FCoE environment including multiple adapters from different vendors in a single server,” said Bill Martin, FCoE Plugfest chair and engineer consultant for the Office of Technology at Emulex “This added testing validates interoperability of multiple CNA vendors in a single environment and allows the industry to move forward toward quick implementation of an interoperable converged network environment.”

“The tremendous support behind the FCoE standard is extraordinary,” says Skip Jones, chairman FCIA and director of Technology and Planning at QLogic Corporation. “After completing our third Plugfest – FCoE still continues to prove the robustness of the technology and will allow the industry to rapidly deploy stable multi-vendor interoperable FCoE-based solutions.” Today, a number of member companies are shipping and developing solutions around FCoE.

About FCIA
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a non-profit international organization whose sole purpose is to act as the independent technology and marketing voice of the Fibre Channel industry. We are committed to helping member organizations promote and position Fibre Channel, and to providing a focal point for Fibre Channel information, standards advocacy, and education. FCIA members include manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals, and end users. Our member-led working groups and committees focus on creating and championing the Fibre Channel technology roadmaps, targeting applications that include data storage, video, networking, and storage area network (SAN) management. For more info, go to http://www.fibrechannel.org

About the UNH-IOL
Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is a non-profit organization that offers comprehensive interoperability and conformance-based testing through 19 technology-based groups, called consortiums. Test solutions created at the UNH-IOL offer a set of methods to increase interoperability through protocol operations, signaling, and point-to-point and multi-system scenarios. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: www.iol.unh.edu.

The UNH-IOL also runs the Fibre Channel Consortium, a separate association of companies building new products and interested in testing them on an ongoing basis

# # #

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners