QLogic Extends Value of Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director with I/OFlex Technology for Multi-protocol Connectivity and High-availability Architecture

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., May 13, 2013 – QLogic (Nasdaq: QLGC) today announced that the new Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director is certified for use with QLogic® FlexSuite™ adapters. The combination of QLogic FlexSuite adapters and Cisco MDS switches provides flexible, high performance building blocks for next-generation storage area networks (SANs).

The Cisco MDS portfolio offers flexible, multi-protocol solutions for Fibre Channel, FICON, Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), iSCSI, and converged networking with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). QLogic’s award-winning, dual-personality 2600 and 8300 Series FlexSuite adapters with I/OFlex technology function as 4/8/16Gb Fibre Channel adapters or as 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) converged network adapters (CNAs). Combined with the latest Cisco offerings, QLogic FlexSuite solutions provide customers tremendous flexibility and investment protection with multi-protocol choices that future-proof SAN server and storage connectivity.

The 16Gb Fibre Channel Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director delivers 24 terabytes per second of total switching capacity, three times the bandwidth of any other storage director in the industry. QLogic FlexSuite 2600 Series adapters provide three times the performance and double the throughput of previous-generation products. Together, these QLogic and Cisco solutions shorten backup and restore windows, and provide high-performance connectivity for moving large data sets across the network.

The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director is a highly reliable storage director with N+1 fabric, fully redundant components and a fault-tolerant architectural design. QLogic’s high-availability architecture provides port-level isolation, adding an additional layer of reliability, scalability and security with each port having its own set of processor, memory and firmware resources. The combination of QLogic FlexSuite adapters and the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director provides non-stop operations with predictable scalability.

“Cisco and QLogic continue to deliver the performance and architectural flexibility that enable data centers to be more agile, cost-effective and reliable,” said Amit Vashi vice president of marketing, Host Solutions Group, QLogic. “Our solutions reduce complexity and deliver new levels of flexibility to meet the enterprise-class LAN and SAN connectivity demands of today’s servers and storage, as well as provide a future-proof solution for the service-oriented, cloud-enabled data centers of tomorrow.”

“Cisco’s MDS solutions and QLogic’s Fibre Channel and FCoE adapters unify customer storage architectures for easy manageability and operations,” said Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president, Cisco Data Center Group. “Cisco is pleased to work with QLogic to offer an open adapter environment, in which customers can select best-of-breed interfaces that best support their infrastructure, with the assurance of certification and interoperability.”

The QLogic FlexSuite product portfolio interoperates with Cisco Data Center Unified Fabric solutions to address new customer requirements for SANs by delivering a single platform for both Fibre Channel and FCoE. The continued growth of data, fueled by virtualization, cloud computing and the adoption of flash and SSD technology, will require high-bandwidth, zero-downtime, multi-protocol storage networking solutions. The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director addresses these concerns with the proven reliability, performance, availability and scalability needed by today’s mission-critical applications such as Oracle, SAP and SQL. QLogic and Cisco address future data growth requirements and preserve current IT knowledge with multi-protocol technology and unmatched flexibility.

QLogic – the Ultimate in Performance
QLogic (Nasdaq: QLGC) is a global leader and technology innovator in high performance networking, including adapters, switches and ASICs. Leading OEMs and channel partners worldwide rely on QLogic products for their data, storage and server networking solutions. For more information, visit www.qlogic.com.

Media Contact:
Steve Sturgeon
QLogic Corporation
858.472.5669
steve.sturgeon@qlogic.com

Investor Contact:
Jean Hu
QLogic Corporation
949.389.7579
jean.hu@qlogic.com

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