For those of you who have made the jump to Cisco Nexus or FCoE you are probably already familiar with what a CNA adapter is and have them installed in your servers. For those of you not yet familiar with the technology, just think of it as the next generation of HBA that allows you to run Ethernet and FCoE over the same adapter.
The major players in the market, no surprise, are Emulex and Qlogic just like in the HBA market. Qlogic recently released the newest Gen2 CNA cards and I expect that Emulex won’t be far behind. So what are some of the benefits of the new Gen2’s? Well, here’s a short list:
- Single-Chip: The older cards required multiple chip sets to handle the different functions of the card resulting in a full height card which created space issues in some servers.
- 150% Faster FCoE data transfer rates
- Up to 60+% more efficient from a power stand point
- Full FCoE hardware offload to increase virtualization performance
- Compatible with SFP+ copper cables for the Nexus 5000 (much less expensive)
There are some very good promotions available for the dual-port cards until the end of the year so check with your reseller if you are looking to go down the CNA road or if you’re already on it.
