The ABC's of FCoE: New white paper tells it like it is

[#1]

By Bret Gibbs, product marketing manager, FC HBAs and CNAs

There’s a lot of buzz out there in the market these days about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).  Seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and touting the benefits of FCoE: fewer components, reduced cost, greener data centers, etc.  Oh yeah, and don’t forget to have your acronym decoder ring handy as you will likely be adding a few new acronyms to your repertoire:  FCoE, CEE, DCB—just to name a few.

The common theme I’ve heard from our sales force and customers is they want to cut through the hype and get to the real meat of how FCoE can benefit their data center.  How does FCoE benefit my business? Will I need to rip and replace my current infrastructure? What components make up an FCoE solution?  How do I manage all this new infrastructure? How much does all of this stuff cost? How does FCoE infrastructure performance stack up?

Your questions, answered

Well, we decided it was time that someone put together something that clearly explains FCoE, its benefits, components, costs, performance and how all this stuff gets wired together—all in an easy to follow format.  We partnered with Emulex and Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to produce a whitepaper that I feel is probably the best FCoE whitepaper I’ve seen out there yet: HP CN1000E CNA – Seamlessly Enabling Universal Network Convergence

This whitepaper does an excellent job of explaining the benefits of FCoE in clear and concise language. It gives the right level of technical detail without talking over the head of anyone new to the game.  We let ESG Labs loose in our HP labs in Marlborough, Massachusetts, to give the reader an independent review of what it takes to purchase, deploy and manage an FCoE solution from HP. The ESG authors take you through their experience in our labs and do a great job of cutting through the hype and helping you understand the real benefits of deploying an HP FCoE solution.

One white paper, two convenient versions

Oh yeah, and because we know that one size does not fit all, we created two versions for you to suit your needs:

• Full report (19 pages)
• Executive summary  (2 pages)

When you get ready to explore some more, here’s more information about our Converged Network Adapters and Converged Network Switches.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the white paper!

[#2]

Can you please update the links to the whitepapers? They appear to be broken.

[#3]

I'm guessing they are no longer available since they are over 2 years old - usually white papers written by analysts come with a one year license to distribute the paper, which has passed on these.  I'll ask if the team has any more recent papers on the topic.