Solarflare Announces Solarflare Solarstorm SFN5121T Dual-Port 10GBASE-T Server Adapter
Solarflare Unveils Its Solarstorm Dual-Port, Triple-Speed 10GBASE-T Server Adapter for High-Performance, Virtualized Data Centers
By Enabling IT Managers to Leverage Investments in Installed Cabling and Legacy 1000BASE-T Equipment, SFN5121T Will Accelerate Deployment of Cost Effective 10GbE Networks
Solarflare Communications, the pioneer in 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), announced today the Solarflare® Solarstorm® SFN5121T dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapter.
At less than half the power of competitive offerings, the SFN5121T is the industry’s lowest-power 10GBASE-T network interface card (NIC). Designed from the ground up to support hardware assisted virtualization, the SFN5121T supports the emerging PCI SIG SR-IOV (single-root IO virtualization) standard, and accelerates guest applications in VMware, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper V environments.
Multiple high-density 24- to 48-port 10GBASE-T data center switches are now available from several switch vendors, such as Arista Networks, Cisco, Dell and Extreme. The broad availability of these line-rate, non-blocking 10GBASE-T switches drives the need for high-performance, dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapters. Combined with the availability of multi-core servers that can take advantage of 10Gbps, IT and data center managers now have the products to build cost-effective 10GbE networks.
10GBASE-T supports auto negotiation with installed 1000BASE-T equipment, giving IT and data center managers the flexibility to manage their server upgrades asynchronously from their switch upgrades. Both ends of the wire will not have to be upgraded to 10GbE at the same time. The Solarflare SFN5121T also runs on installed Category 5E and 6 cabling, allowing network managers to preserve their costly investments in cabling and patch panels.
“We are excited to broaden our portfolio of Solarflare products with our latest dual-port 10GBASE-T NIC,” said Mike Smith, general manager of host solutions. “Our newest product addresses the needs of the evolving market, delivering the power, application performance and virtualization capabilities for today’s data centers. Over 90% of cabling in data centers and enterprises is twisted pair copper. Now, data center and IT managers can avoid forklift upgrades and leverage their cabling investments when deploying 10GbE networks.”
The SFN5121T includes many Ethernet energy efficiency features such as Dynamic Power Scaling™, which enables shorter links to consume less power, as well as sleep and data center modes. At less than 6.5 watts per port in 100-meter mode and 5.5 watts per port in data center mode, the SFN5121T is the lowest-power 10GBASE-T server adapter on the market.
With its hardware-assisted support for virtualization, the SFN5121T delivers up to 5 times the application performance of other server adapters by accelerating virtual IO for Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper V and VMware. The SFN5121T also possesses the industry’s most scalable virtualization architecture, supporting 256 virtual functions and up to 2048 virtual machines, 16 times greater scalability than conventional approaches.
Solarflare’s Solarstorm SFN5121T dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapter features numerous
advanced functions, including:
- Support for a rich set of stateless offloads including: TSO, RSO; IPv4/IPv6; TCP/IP checksum; UDP multicast
- Driver support for popular operating systems environments, including Microsoft Windows®, RHEL™ Linux, Solaris™, VMware® ESX 3.5 and vSphere 4, Citrix® XenServer™ and Novell SLES
The SFN5121T will be generally available in August and offered at US list price of $1,200. For more information on pricing and availability of Solarflare products, contact productinfo@solarflare.com or visit www.solarflare.com.
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About Solarflare Communications, Inc.
Solarflare Communications is the leading provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) silicon and server adapters. Solarflare’s robust and power-efficient solutions are cost effective and easy to deploy. Ready for primetime, Solarflare 10GbE products make possible next-generation applications such as low-latency networking (with OpenOnload™) for market data applications, cloud computing, server virtualization, and network convergence. Solarflare 10GbE adapters have proven their performance in testing conducted by Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) Research with Cisco switches and IBM servers. Solarflare silicon can be found in switches, adapters and test equipment shipping from Dell, SMC Networks and others. The company has announced partnerships with Accton, Arista Networks, Citrix, Cloudsoft, CommScope, Delta Networks, Panduit, Solace Systems, SR Labs and VMware. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California, has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK and sales offices in Taiwan and China. For more information, please visit www.solarflare.com
