EMC Corporation Debuts EMC Connectrix MP-8000B or FCoE Switch

EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure solutions, has introduced the EMC (News - Alert) Connectrix MP-8000B or FCoE switch.

According to a company press release, the new addition will form part of EMC’s Connectrix family of switches and directors, which allow server and cable consolidation by leveraging the FCoE and Converged Enhanced Ethernet standards. This helps transfer data between physical and virtual servers and storage systems over high speed, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks.

The new Connectrix MP-8000B Switch is based on OEM technology from Brocade (News - Alert). It allows LAN and storage traffic to travel on a single 10 GigE link without additional SAN or LAN adapters and cables. This reduces acquisition costs and operating costs incurred on server power consumption and cooling.

The FCoE protocol allows the new switch to seamlessly integrate with Fiber Channel SANs, management processes and workflows ensuring smooth migration for SAN customers.

The Connectrix MP-8000B features eight 8 Gbps Fiber Channel ports and also 24 10 GbE ports. These ports support Converged Enhanced Ethernet, a new Ethernet standard which ensures reliability and scalability of Ethernet networks. The new version supports multiple traffic classes over lossless Ethernet fabric. This allows consolidation of LAN, SAN and cluster environments, said EMC sources.

In the release, Barbara Robidoux, vice president of storage marketing at EMC said, “As FCoE technology continues to gain market momentum, EMC is continuing to expand its capabilities to further help customers address some key data center challenges, including infrastructure sprawl and power and cooling issues.”

She continued, “The Connectrix MP-8000B is designed to help data center managers meet the ever-increasing I/O (input/output) demands of multi-core processors, VMware Infrastructure and other virtualized server and SAN environments. It also enables additional servers to be attached to the existing SAN infrastructure and take advantage of the capabilities of EMC’s networked storage systems.”

The MP-8000B is based on Fabric OS which delivers distributed intelligence in the network besides enabling applications and fabric services, like Fabric Watch, Inter-Switch Link (ISL (News - Alert)) Trunking, and end-to-end Advanced Performance Monitoring.

EMC sources said that the switch will be managed by Connectrix Manager Data Center Edition, which manages traditional Fiber Channel SAN and new FCoE/CEE environments from a single application.