SAN FRANCISCO, CA – July 6, 2012 – The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), a non-profit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators and vendors, today announced the completion of the second 16 Gb Fibre Channel Plugfest and the eighth FCoE Plugfest, which was held during the week of May 14, 2012 at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL).

Endorsed by the FCIA, this 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.

With continued releases of FCoE products, the plugfest demonstrated:

  • Advanced infrastructure connectivity including FCoE multi-hop
  • Multihop configurations between switches, initiators, and targets, including DCB switches
  • Interoperability between 10G FCoE products and 16GFC switches, initiators, and targets
  • Fibre Channel 16GFC extensive testing of the physical layer connectivity between initiators, targets, switches including 16Gb FC 5M and 1M passive copper; 8Gb FC 5M active copper; and OM2, OM3, and OM4 optical with the maximum lengths specified in the standard
  • In addition to the physical layer testing, 16GFC direct connect between initiator and target and speed negotiation between 16GFC and 8GFC was demonstrated

“As Fibre Channel continues its predominance as the storage network infrastructure interconnect and protocol in the enterprise data center, users are assured by our plugfests that native FC and FCoE products from different vendors will perform as advertised with solid plug-and-play interoperability,” said Skip Jones, FCIA Chairman, QLogic. “From 1GFC to our most recent 16GFC and 10GFCoE plugfests at UNH, FCIA is delighted to continue our 20 year partnership with UNH.”

The ten participating companies included:

Amphenol
Broadcom
Brocade
Cisco
DCS		 JDSU
HP
LeCroy
QLogic
SanBlaze

Bill Martin, FC Plugfest Chair, Emulex, says, “as products are being released that support 10G FCoE and 16GFC, the plugfest continues to demonstrate interoperability of FCoE and FC products and backward compatibility of FC products at 4GFC, 8GCF, and 16GFC. This interoperability and backward compatibility allows customers to continue to grow their storage infrastructure taking advantage of the speed and functional improvements while leveraging their current investment.”

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