QLogic 10000 Series
8Gbps Fibre Channel-to-PCIe FabricCache Adapter

Features and Benefits:

Industry First

The 10000 Series FabricCache Adapter is an industry-first, patent-pending, SAN connectivity product that accelerates data throughput to dramatically improve application performance by using industry-standard PCIe Flash as its data cache.

Built on Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter, caching, and I/O management technology that has been hardened and proven in the enterprise, QLogic has created an adapter that transparently caches SAN data to QLE10000 Flash. The caching accelerates server I/O access and uniquely allows servers to pool and share access to the cache. Today's enterprise applications demand faster I/O access because they are clustered and virtualized, and have distributed workloads across the data center. The QLogic FabricCache Adapter uniquely addresses these needs by providing shared, cached data and adapter clustering, which in turn maintains cache coherence, high availability, and optimal allocation of cache resources.

Caching Offload to Adapter Hardware

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 subsystemagnostic. 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

Because the 10000 Series Adapter contains 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

The 10000 Series Adapter 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 while optimally allocating 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 10000 Series Adapter uses the QLogic Fibre Channel driver and management stack enhanced for I/O caching. This model greatly simplifies deployment of the 10000 Series Adapter 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 QConvergeConsole GUI and the Host CLI as management tools for cache creation and management, as well as standard Fibre Channel device management.

Technical Specifications:

Documentation:

Download the QLogic FabricCache 10000 Series Adapter Datasheet  (PDF).