San Francisco, Calif., – Dec, 1st, 2011 – The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), a non-profit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators and vendors, today announced the completion of the first 16 GFC Plugfest and the seventh FCoE Plugfest, which was held during the week of October 24th at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

Endorsed by the FCIA, the Plugfest provided a forum where leading Fibre Channel vendors came together to collaborate on their respective FCoE and 16GFC products to ensure both interoperability and configurability between vendors. This Plugfest also focused on end-to-end tests that included FCoE in combination with 8GFC and for the first time 16GFC.

Participating companies in the Plugfest included Amphenol, Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, DCS, Emulex, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, JDSU, LeCroy, NetApp, QLogic and SANBlaze Technology.

“The testing conducted last week was very successful. Not only were the participating companies able to demonstrate interoperability of 16GFC products to other 16GFC products, but also to 8GFC products and FCoE products,” said Bill Martin, FCoE Plugfest chair and engineer consultant for the Office of Technology at Emulex. According to Martin: “we also pushed our testing a bit, always important in these environments, and found an issue with the specification on how a device works with multiple FCFs in an FCoE fabric. This is generating proposals into the FC-BB-6 working group for resolution of the issue.”

“With the entry of 16GFC products into the market place this first 16GFC plugfest provides a great proof point on the robustness and reliability of the proven Fibre Channel technologies” said Skip Jones, chairman FCIA. “With the huge installed base of Fibre Channel and continued strong sales of FC and solid growth of FCoE the industry will continue to provide strong Fibre Channel solutions today and into the future.”

About FCIA
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a non-profit international organization whose sole purpose is to act as the independent technology and marketing voice of the Fibre Channel industry. We are committed to helping member organizations promote and position Fibre Channel, and to providing a focal point for Fibre Channel information, standards advocacy, and education.

FCIA members include manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals, and end users. Our member-led working groups and committees focus on creating and championing the Fibre Channel technology roadmaps, targeting applications that include data storage, video, networking, and storage area network (SAN) management. For more info, go to https://fibrechannel.org.

About the UNH-IOL
Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is a non-profit organization that offers comprehensive interoperability and conformance-based testing through 19 technology-based groups, called consortiums. Test solutions created at the UNH-IOL offer a set of methods to increase interoperability through protocol operations, signaling, and point-to-point and multi-system scenarios. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: www.iol.unh.edu.

The UNH-IOL also runs the Fibre Channel Consortium, a separate association of companies building new products and interested in testing them on an ongoing basis.

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Contact:
Chris Lyon
FCIA Executive Director
clyon@fibrechannel.org 425-359-3326