Just to clarify, the Cisco UCS uses unified CNA mezzanine cards internal to the system architecture as a way of simplifying the overall system architecture. The Cisco UCS connects to the existing data center infrastructure with fully standards compliant Ethernet and Fibre Channel.

The problem you note about swapping out needing to swap out hardware to support CNAs is a common challenge faced by customers who want to retrofit CNAs on existing servers, regardless of the vendor involved. For that reason, we expect the migration at many customer to be tied to the server refresh cycle–they will migrate to 10GbE and/or FCoE as they cycle new servers into their data centers.

If I can offer further clarification, please feel free to ping me.

Omar Sultan
Cisco

1. There is a typo in the company name “Emulex” (it show up as Emulux in the text).

2. Comment on the following text:
.”An advantage to many of these setups is that a company may be able to get away with using a smaller server because it now needs fewer ports. That would, in turn, require smaller switches.”

Comment: While there may be fewer ports, they could be higher capacity (10 Gbps versus 1 Gbps). Same with the port capacity on the switches – one 10 Gbps port versus several 1 Gbps ports. However, it wouldn’t necessarily mean “smaller switches’, just different capacity considerations. Interestingly, the Xsigo solution requires a “fan out” – which, while reducing the adapter/port requirements on the server, might have only marginal impact on the Ethernet port requirements on the switch.

Thanks,
Sridhar