The 400GB 10000 Series Dual Port FabricCache Adapter from QLogic is an integrated hardware solution that combines Fibre Channel SAN connectivity, backed by enterprise-class PCIe flash to increase application performance and decrease latency through I/O data caching. It is a PCIe-based adapter that caches SAN data on a PCIe flash card to accelerate server I/O access. The Adapter offloads caching to adapter hardware, which accelerates I/O and provides shared caching for clustered, virtualized, and distributed workloads across the data center. It also enables simple deployment by means of a single driver and management model that reduces software stack complexity.
Caching Offload
The 10000 Series Adapter controls all caching and flash cache management in the adapter hardware, with zero changes as a standard Fibre Channel adapter in the server. This control results in a solution that is application-transparent, as well as infrastructure and storage subsystem agnostic. The 10000 Series Adapter caching offload enables faster application response-time, provides lower latencies for data access, and results in increased productivity. By providing full hardware offload, QLogic adapters deliver significant performance benefits and remove the protocol processing overhead from the CPU. Offloading conserves precious CPU cycles for applications and services, and it maximizes server virtualization ratios and saves RAM.
Single Server Transparent Caching
Due to Fibre Channel adapter functionality, it is fully aware of the read/write I/O traffic on the Fibre Channel link in a single server. This awareness enables the adapter to make transparent data caching decisions based on throughput traffic patterns, thereby optimizing data access for all applications running on the server.
Clustered Server Transparent Caching
It delivers the ability to cluster adapters and share cache between servers. Clustering creates a logical group of adapters that provides a single point-of-management, which cooperates to maintain cache coherence and high availability, and optimally allocates cache resources. Unlike standard Fibre Channel adapters, the QLogic FabricCache Adapters communicate with one another using the Fibre Channel infrastructure. This communication provides cluster and cache management across multiple server nodes. After defining caches for LUNs on the SAN, each adapter identifies the owner of the LUN cache. Because all FabricCache Adapters recognize the cache owner for a specific LUN, I/Os are redirected to the cache owner. This distributed cache model enables a single copy of cached data, maximizing the use of the cache and making a very scalable infrastructure.
Comprehensive OS Support
Built on QLogic core Host Bus Adapter and storage routing technology, the Adapter uses the QLogic Fibre Channel driver and management stack enhanced for I/O caching. This model greatly simplifies deployment because the hardware provides all of the flash and cache management, and each OS requires only a standard Fibre Channel driver. The driver uses the QLogic QConverge Console GUI and the Host CLI as management tools for cache creation and management, as well as standard Fibre Channel device management.