Up and Down the Network Stack

How to fry an egg on a Solarflare adapter

There seems to be a lot of interest in frying eggs on converged network adapters these days;

   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/13/emulex_fries_egg_on_qlogic/
   http://www.thestreet.com/story/10679932/1/qlogic-sues-emulex-over-ads-exclusive.html

 So I thought I'd offer some tips to anyone tempted to fry an egg on a Solarflare adapter.

1. Solarflare adapters are very low-power. Our dual port SFP+ NIC is <5W so some external heat source will be required to heat the NIC to the required temperature to fry the egg. I'd recommend a portable camping stove or a hand-held butane torch.

2. PCBs tend to emit rather nasty fumes when external heat sources are applied. Depending on your workplace health regulations, you may need to perform the experiment in a fume cupboard or out of doors.

3. I am reliably informed that frying an egg on one of our NICs will void your warranty and may be a sign that you need to check your stress levels / go visit a doctor.

 

Remember children -- this is something that you should not attempt to perform without adult supervision.

Virtualization and iSCSI simplify IT

Yesterday Dell completed its acquisition of Equal Logic, together with a quote from Michael Dell:

Virtualization and iSCSI are two keys to simplifying IT. Enterprises are creating data and consuming power at an exponential rate, driving up IT cost and complexity.

When you combine this with Dell's Veso announcement at the '07 VMworld, a picture of ubiquitous virtualization combined with simple easy to use (commoditized) iSCSI emerges. This environment is something that Solarflare has been actively supporting - our SFC4000 10GBASE-T controller has been designed specifically to support iSCSI within a virtualized environment. For some more details, see our see our  presentation  at the Xen Nov 07 summit.

-- Thanks to Robert Stonehouse