Emulex has announced that it will offer Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBA) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) for use with OpenSolaris' Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target (COMSTAR), thereby providing end-to-end Fibre Channel and FCoE support within OpenSolaris environments. Emulex's LightPulse HBAs and CNAs enable Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris customers to evaluate and deploy storage appliances, while experiencing the benefits of network convergence, such as increased server efficiency, and lower power and cooling costs.

"The delivery of Converged Network Adapters for Sun's COMSTAR is yet another proof point to Emulex's leadership in driving open source solutions and encouraging data center innovation," said Scott McIntyre, vice president of product marketing, Emulex Corporation. "Using Emulex HBAs and CNAs with COMSTAR provides users and partners with the flexibility to develop and deploy COMSTAR-based appliances within existing infrastructures and helping provide investment protection with next-generation data center solutions."

Emulex's FCoE CNAs can simplify networking infrastructure by consolidating Fibre Channel and networking traffic over a 10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet network, looking to reduce overall infrastructure costs and lower overall power and cooling costs. Used within Sun Microsystems' single-driver Solaris environment, Emulex adapters ensure the best quality and the shortest learning curve for enterprise users looking to deploy end-to-end FCoE in either initiator servers or target server storage appliances. They also use the same driver code as the widely-qualified, Fibre Channel-aware Leadville initiator driver, which provides a more efficient and easy-to-manage interface for Solaris systems.

"Sun Microsystems has always been at the forefront of storage application development and partners, like Emulex, play a key role in making that possible," said Michael Wojnar, product line manager, Networking Group, Sun Microsystems. "By using Emulex's adapters with the COMSTAR software framework, Solaris and OpenSolaris users can now evaluate and deploy storage appliance solutions within the context of emerging converged networks and experience enterprise storage reliability, scalability and, performance."