New product release.
biz.yahoo.com
Monday May 4, 2:11 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Emulex Brings Digital Technology to New Gigabit Fibre Channel Hub
New Gigabit Design Provides Superior Loop Robustness and Management With the Use of Emulex Proprietary NL-Port
ASIC Technology
COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 1998-- Emulex Corp. (Nasdaq:EMLX - news), an industry leader in fibre channel products and
technology, Monday announced, the industry's first gigabit digital fibre channel hub.
The LightPulse(TM) LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub provides a revolutionary new tool for OEMs, system integrators and administrators of fibre channel
systems. New patent pending features in the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub which include automatic fault isolation and recovery, fault analysis, and performance
analysis and tuning will significantly improve loop stability, reliability and availability.
Using Emulex's proprietary NL-Port technology, developed and field-proven in Emulex's LightPulse fibre channel host bus adapters, and the extensive
experience with network management gained in Emulex's printer server family, the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub brings a new level of manageability to fibre
channel arbitrated loop networks. Using the LH5000's management interface, administrators can remotely monitor the fibre channel network's performance
and program the hub's operation via the LH5000's standard ethernet or serial management ports.
''Fibre channel arbitrated loops provide the most cost-effective fibre channel solution for many users, but have traditionally suffered from a lack of
manageability to solve loop operability problems,'' said Ed Frymoyer of emf Associates, a fibre channel market researcher. ''The new digital hub technology
from Emulex provides a major advancement in the robustness of fibre channel arbitrated loops, allowing users to safely build larger loop configurations and
manage them 24 hours a day even from remote locations.''
''Our goal with the LH5000 digital hub was to provide a means to manage the entire arbitrated loop, as opposed to simply managing the hub,'' said Mike
Kane, marketing director for Emulex. ''Using the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub, fibre channel OEMs, integrators, and users can achieve a higher level of loop
availability and performance than possible today, without any price premium over unmanaged solutions.''
The LH5000 provides a total of 10 fibre channel compliant ports, in one half the width of a standard 1-u high 19-inch rack enclosure, the highest density
managed hub to date. Placing two units side by side on the optional rack mounting kit, it is possible to provide 20 fibre channel ports with management in a
standard 1-u rack slot.
Two models are planned, a configurable version and an all copper version. The configurable version provides the ability to field configure or replace
physical media through the use of 8 standard GBIC ports on the front panel and provides an additional 2 Copper DB9 connections on the rear panel. The
all copper version replaces the GBIC ports with standard DB9 connectors. Both versions also supply ethernet and serial management ports on the front
panel.
Using the Emulex proprietary NL-Port ASIC technology to provide a totally digital hub architecture, the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub eliminates all signal jitter
and provides automatic clock speed matching on every port. As a result, an unlimited number of LH5000 hubs can be cascaded providing flexibility in
network design and increasing potential cabling distances.
The LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub, provides several new features which significantly improve the reliability and availability of fibre channel arbitrated loops by
isolating faults which are potentially damaging to the rest of the loop, and correcting error conditions which may result in loop downtime. All features may be
enabled or disabled, using the LH5000's management interface. Features include LIP F8 bypass, character integrity, synchronous cut-in/cut-out, and
automatic LIP insertion.
The LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub also provides management statistics on a per port basis including number of invalid transmission words, bit error rate, and
port down counts, and allows programmability including forced port bypass, hysteresis of automatic bypass, and LIP insertion.
Management of the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub is provided via an HTML interface which is compatible with most standard Web browsers or via Command
Line Interface through a local console or Telnet. An SNMP interface will also be available for the LH5000 shortly after initial product launch, and will be
downloadable to existing hubs free of charge.
Regular updates to the LH5000's management interface will provide additional features and operational updates as they are developed. Updated
management firmware will be made available on the Emulex Web site free of charge, and can be downloaded to hubs in the field using the manager. The
LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub joins an extensive family of fibre channel products from Emulex addressing the needs of both mission critical enterprise
applications and direct connect storage links.
In addition to the LH5000, Emulex provides the LH1005 Fibre Hub, which provides a cost effective solution for small workgroups and departmental
servers and the LightPulse family of fibre channel PCI Host Bus Adapters, including the LP7000E, benchmarked at over 20,000 I/O operations per
second, the industry's best performing I/O solution.
Initial evaluation units of the LH5000 Digital Fibre Hub will be available in June, with production availability planned for August. Single unit pricing is
$2,599, or $260 per port, for the all copper version and $3,199 for the GBIC version (GBIC's supplied separately). Emulex will also supply GBIC's
supporting DB-9 copper cables, multimode and single mode optical fiber, and a rackmounting kit supporting standard 19-inch equipment racks.
Emulex Background
Emulex is a leading designer of high-performance network connectivity products including fibre channel host bus adapters and hubs, printer servers and
network access products. The company's hardware and software-based networking solutions improve communication in computer networks and enhance
data flow between computers and peripherals.
Fibre channel is a high-performance ANSI standard interface that is supported by the 120+ worldwide member Fibre Channel Association which includes
Sun, Hewlett-Packard and Seagate. As a leading developer and supplier of fibre channel technology, Emulex's fibre channel devices support all
implementations of the fibre channel standard, including arbitrated loop, switched fabric and point-to-point topologies.
The company markets to OEMs and end users through its own worldwide selling organization, as well as two-tier distribution partners. Corporate
headquarters are located in Costa Mesa. News releases and other information about Emulex are available via Emulex's World Wide Web address at
emulex.com.
... I/O by Emulex(TM)
This news release refers to various products and companies by their trade names. In most, if not all, cases these designations are claimed as trademarks or
registered trademarks by their respective companies. |
