Emulex Announces High Performance Support for VMware vSphere® 5.5

SAN FRANCISCO and COSTA MESA, Calif., Aug. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- VMWORLD -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE: ELX), a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced that with the release of VMware vSphere® 5.5, Emulex I/O connectivity, monitoring and management solutions provide broad support and integration for VMware users across VMware virtualization management platforms and hypervisors.  Emulex also announces planned support for Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) offload in VMware vSphere, with the forthcoming Emulex Virtual Network eXceleration™ (VNeX) virtual network offload technology which provides optimal performance for virtual networks and reduced CPU overhead on the host. In early engineering testing, Emulex VNeX technology is shown to improve network throughput by up to 130%, depending on system configuration.¹   

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120403/NE81278LOGO)

"The emergence of high performance Virtual Network Fabrics (VNFs) -- virtual networks built on top of, and transparently over, traditional networking infrastructure -- are designed to improve network flexibility and streamline network operations for virtualized and hybrid cloud environments," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "We have been collaborating with VMware and other ecosystem partners to bring forth a new generation of software defined networking (SDN) solutions that enable higher throughput, virtual machine (VM) mobility and reduced complexity. These include our forthcoming Emulex VNeX virtual network offload technology, as well as our portfolio of I/O connectivity solutions that are designed for the most scalable, high-performance data centers today."

Leveraging industry standard VXLAN technology, VMware virtual networking solutions address some of the challenges of cloud and next generation data center networking by enabling flexible workload mobility inside the private, public, or hybrid cloud, and reducing the cost and complexity of network reconfiguration dramatically. Forthcoming Emulex VNeX technology simplifies network scaling by enabling IT managers to adapt or provision the network as virtual machines (VMs) that start up, shut down, or move, based on the VM's specific workload requirement, thereby shifting available resources for other workloads on the logical network.Emulex VNeX virtual network offload technology further accelerates VMware vSphere performance by offloading VXLAN stateless offloads for virtual switches that support VMware vSphere, allowing environments to more efficiently scale to meet the needs of customers while improving network throughput and reducing CPU overhead. In early engineering testing, Emulex VNeX technology is shown to improve network throughput up to 130%, depending on system configuration.

In addition to planned Emulex VNeX support, Emulex connects, monitors, and manages I/O in VMware vSphere environments in the following ways:

• Superior Gen 5 Fibre Channel Connectivity for Virtualized, Flash, and Cloud Environments: Emulex Gen 5 Fibre Channel HBAs, including the newly announced LPe16004 Gen 5 quad-port FC HBA, LPe15004-M8 8GFC HBA, and the LPe16202 converged fabric adapter,  enable up to 1.2 million I/O operations per second (IOPS) on a single port, with up to 75% reduced latency vs. 8GFC HBAs², addressing the needs of scalable private clouds, mission-critical application virtualization like databases, and VDI environments. The new Emulex Gen 5 HBAs further enable the full power of VMware caching solutions, providing the only balanced IOPS and low latency storage network to take full advantage of host- and storage-based flash cache.
• 100% Accurate Network Monitoring: Virtual and cloud environments exponentially increase the potential for network issues with increased volume and variety of network traffic. The Emulex Endace portfolio of network visibility products simplify building and maintaining effective - virtual networks by recording network traffic and alerts with continuous 100% accuracy, regardless of network speed, or traffic type. The Emulex Endace solutions allow network operations (NetOps) personnel to identify critical network issues such as boot storms, switch failures, incorrect network configurations, and attacks, and effectively address them.
• Integrated Management: Emulex OneCommand® Manager plug-in for VMware vCenter™ Server simplifies management of Emulex I/O connectivity solutions within VMware vSphere environments directly from VMware vCenter Server, and within the vSphere Web Client™. Emulex's native mode drivers for VMware vSphere 5.5 have full management support through OneCommand Manager and industry-standard CIM providers. In addition, OneCommand Manager has added support for single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), providing administrators with the ability to deploy hardware device virtualization on the I/O path within the server, maximizing bandwidth utilization for virtual server environments and hybrid clouds built on the VMware platform.

"VMware vSphere® supports the software defined data center, hybrid clouds and virtual desktops, and addresses the challenges of cloud networking by reducing network complexity and enabling virtual machine mobility," said Mike Adams, Director, Cloud Infrastructure Product Marketing, VMware. "Forthcoming Emulex VNeX technology and broad I/O connectivity, monitoring and management support can further accelerate performance of virtualized environments while improving network throughput and offering our joint customers a highly integrated, powerful and efficient solution addressing their data center needs."

Tweet this: #VMworld news: Emulex Announces High Performance Support for @VMware #vSphere http://ow.ly/obdDk

Read our Labs blog on today's news here.

Follow Emulex on Twitter.

About Emulex
Emulex, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, provides hardware and software solutions for global networks that support enterprise, cloud, government and telecommunications. Emulex's products enable unrivaled end-to-end application visibility, optimization and acceleration. The Company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of ultra high-performance Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, have been designed into server and storage solutions from leading OEMs, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, and can be found in the data centers of nearly all of the Fortune 1000. Emulex's monitoring and management solutions, including its portfolio of network visibility and recording products, provide organizations with complete network performance management at speeds up to 100Gb Ethernet. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) please visit http://www.Emulex.com.

 "Safe Harbor" Statement
"Safe Harbor'' Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above, contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or changes to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. We wish to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the possibility that we may not realize the anticipated benefits from the acquisition of Endace on a timely basis or at all, and may be unable to integrate the technology, operations and personnel of Endace into our existing operations in a timely and efficient manner.  In addition, intellectual property claims, with or without merit, that could result in costly litigation, cause product shipment delays, require us to indemnify customers, or require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, which may or may not be available. Furthermore, we have in the past obtained, and may be required in the future to obtain, licenses of technology owned by other parties. We cannot be certain that the necessary licenses will be available or that they can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. If we were to fail to obtain such royalty or licensing agreements in a timely manner and on reasonable terms, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Ongoing lawsuits, such as the action brought by Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom), present inherent risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Such potential risks include continuing expenses of litigation, loss of patent rights, monetary damages, injunctions against the sale of products incorporating the technology in question, counterclaims, attorneys' fees, incremental costs associated with product or component redesigns, liabilities to customers under reimbursement agreements or contractual indemnification provisions, and diversion of management's attention from other business matters. With respect to the continuing Broadcom litigation, such potential risks also include the adequacy of any sunset period to make design changes, the ability to implement any design changes, the availability of customer resources to complete any re-qualification or re-testing that may be needed, the ability to maintain favorable working relationships with Emulex suppliers of serializer/deserializer (SerDes) modules, and the ability to obtain a settlement which does not put us at a competitive disadvantage. In addition, the fact that the economy generally, and the technology and storage market segments specifically, have been in a state of uncertainty makes it difficult to determine if past experience is a good guide to the future and makes it impossible to determine if markets will grow or shrink in the short term. Continued weakness in domestic and worldwide macro-economic conditions, related disruptions in world credit and equity markets, and the resulting economic uncertainty for our customers, as well as the storage and converged networking market as a whole, has and could continue to adversely affect our revenues and results of operations. As a result of these uncertainties, we are unable to predict our future results with any accuracy. Other factors affecting these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the following: faster than anticipated declines in the storage networking market, slower than expected growth of the converged networking market or the failure of our Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems; our dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make timely payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the timing and market acceptance of our products or our OEM customers' new or enhanced products; costs associated with entry into new areas of the network, server and storage technology markets; the variability in the level of our backlog and the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of our customers; any inadequacy of our intellectual property protection and the costs of actual or potential third-party claims of infringement and any related indemnity obligations or adverse judgments; the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire us; proxy contests or the activities of activist investors; impairment charges, including but not limited to goodwill and intangible assets; changes in tax rates or legislation; the effects of acquisitions; the effects of terrorist activities, natural disasters, and any resulting disruption in our supply chain or customer purchasing patterns or any other resulting economic or political instability; the highly competitive nature of the markets for our products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions; the effects of changes in our business model to separately charge for software; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; transitions from board or box level to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions for selected applications; a shift in unit product mix from higher-end to lower-end or mezzanine card products; a faster than anticipated decrease in the average unit selling prices or an increase in the manufactured cost of our products; delays in product development; our reliance on third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly; our ability to attract and retain key technical personnel; our ability to benefit from our research and development activities; our dependence on international sales and internationally produced products; changes in accounting standards; and any resulting regulatory changes on our business. These and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and are discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors."

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

VMware, VMworld, vCenter, vSphere Web Client and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks or 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.

Press Contact:
Jolene (Bonina) Peixoto
Senior Manager, Public Relations and Social Media
+1 714-885-3858
[email protected]

SOURCE Emulex Corporation