FCoE a Hot Topic at Storage Networking World

Storage giant EMC introduced its first FCoE switch and said it will support Emulex network adapters using FCoE, moves that could speed adoption of the new protocol.

EMC's Chuck Hollis, reflecting on the SNW show and his company's announcements, wrote that "it's pretty clear that the one standout from this event is that it marks the date where FCoE is starting to be taken very seriously by customers and vendors alike."

NetApp said it would provide native support for FCoE in a storage array. "If you have a NetApp system, FCoE will work with an FCoE target card," said Joel Reich, VP of NetApp's SANiSAN unit.

Cisco Systems (CSCO), which has built much of its Data Center 3.0 strategy around FCoE, said that it is now running FCoE in production for its News@Cisco web site.  

The Register wonders how FCoE's momentum will impact iSCSI, a cheaper alternative to Fibre Channel which has also been advanced as a potential unifying standard for data center networking. "So is this the end for the iSCSI internet storage standard?," Chris Mellor writes. "Has Dell's EqualLogic purchase suddenly been devalued?"