Fibre Channel Industry Association Validates Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and 8GFC Interoperability in Multi-Vendor Testing

Endorsed by the FCIA, the Plugfest provided a forum where leading Fibre Channel vendors came together to collaborate on their respective FCoE and 8GFC 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.

Participating companies in the Plugfest included ATTO, Broadcom, Chelsio, Cisco, Emulex, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Ixia, JDSU, LSI, Mellanox Technologies, NetApp, QLogic and SANBlaze Technology.

“This FCoE Plugfest allowed numerous vendors to increase interoperability between existing 8GFC Fibre Channel HBAs, switches, and storage devices with new FCoE products including FCoE CNAs, FCoE switches, DCB switches, FCoE storage systems, and blade-server focused offerings of Mezzanine cards and DCB switches,” said Bill Martin, FCoE Plugfest chair and engineer consultant for the Office of Technology at Emulex. “FCoE products that are interoperable and compatible with existing Fibre Channel products will insure that Fibre Channel investments are protected with existing storage systems.”

“It was rewarding to see industry leading vendors come together to test their Fibre Channel products under the FCIA sponsored Plugfest,” said Skip Jones, chairman FCIA. “The participation of these companies highlights the strong prevalence of 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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