QLogic and Huawei Symantec sign OEM pact for stackable Fibre Channel switches

ALISO VIEJO, USA: In the latest move to expand its global market share in Fibre Channel switching, QLogic Corp. announced that its 5800V Series and 9000 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel stackable switches will be available immediately from Huawei Symantec, a global provider of network security and storage appliance solutions to enterprise customers around the globe.

"Flexibility is a key criteria for enterprises today. IT departments need solutions that address physical space limitations as well as power restrictions," said Fan Ruiqi, vice president of Huawei Symantec. "QLogic's stackable Fibre Channel technology enables organizations to implement storage network switch solutions that grow with their business needs, unlike non-stackable switches that force you to acquire and manage more switch ports than the business actually requires. We selected QLogic because of the many advantages its switches offer over competing products."

"With operations throughout the world, this pact allows us to expand QLogic Fibre Channel switch revenues in China, Asia Pacific, Japan and around the globe," said Martin Darling, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan. "Huawei Symantec's selection of the QLogic 5800V and 9000 Series validates the value of our signature stackable switch architecture and demonstrates that QLogic switch adoption continues to gain momentum on a global scale."

As multi-core servers begin to drive higher adoption rates of virtualization, there is a commensurate increase in customer demand for higher bandwidth connectivity options. With 20 dedicated 8Gb Fibre Channel device ports per switch, scalable to over 100 device ports in the fabric, QLogic 5800V Series switches address the needs of server virtualization, massive storage capacities, resource-intensive applications and other sources of unpredictable IT growth.

QLogic 9000 Series switches scale to 256 Fibre Channel ports in an 8U dual chassis module HyperStack configuration. This solution provides SAN administrators with all the rack density and performance needed to support hundreds of server and storage nodes—including blade servers and virtual machines.