A converged network adapter (CNA), also called a converged network interface controller (C-NIC), is a computer input/output device that combines the functionality of a

host bus adapter In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter (HBA), connects a computer system bus, which acts as the host system, to other network and storage devices. The terms are primarily used to refer to devices for conne ...

(HBA) with a

network interface controller A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Ear ...

(NIC). In other words, it " converges" access to, respectively, a

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from ser ...

and a general-purpose

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

Support

Some products were marketed around 2005 with the term C-NIC which combined

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

storage functionality with

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use ...

. Later products used the marketing term converged network adapter (CNA), combining

Fibre Channel over Ethernet Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks (or higher speeds) while preserving the Fibre Channel ...

with

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE, 10GbE, or 10 GigE) is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlike previous ...

, for example.

Brocade

Brocade Communications Systems Brocade is an American technology company specializing in storage networking products, now a subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. The company is known for its Fibre Channel storage networking products and technology. Prior to the acquisition, the compan ...

offers two types of CNAs, with PCI Express generation 2.0 interfaces. The only difference between the two models are the number of interfaces on the cards: one or two. The two port model will allow connection to two different switches to create a redundant configuration without having to use two PCI slots.

Broadcom

In 2009

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

entered the CNA market. Broadcom offers their CNAs under their own brand name but also sell the

application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

s and other related components to others. Their intended customers are the larger builders of server systems such as Dell and HP. These vendors can then include the ten Gigabit CNA with their servers: as embedded interface on the motherboard (LOM or LAN on motherboard), via a

mezzanine card In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus s ...

in blade servers or as PCI extension-card.

Emulex

Emulex Emulex Corporation is a provider of computer network connectivity, monitoring and management hardware and software. The company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, are or w ...

offers CNAs under the Emulex brand name as the OneConnect ten Gigabit series of dual port optical and copper adapters. They also OEM their adapters for Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM and NetApp.

QLogic

QLogic offers CNAs via their QLogic 8200 & 8300 series Converged Network Adapters. They offer single and dual port PCI cards with copper or optical fibre interfaces. QLogic CNAs are available under the QLogic brandname and as OEM cards. The QME CNA and drivers were supported by

Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologi ...

NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012–2021. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data service ...

, EMC and IBM.

Hewlett-Packard

HP claims that their BL460c G7 was the first blade server that offers FCoE via a ''LOM'' (LAN on motherboard) instead of using a PCI slot or mezzanine card.

Dell

Dell uses the QLogic 8100 series in their

PowerEdge The PowerEdge (PE) line is Dell's Server (computing), server computer product line. Most PowerEdge servers use the x86 architecture. The early exceptions to this, the PowerEdge 3250, PowerEdge 7150, and PowerEdge 7250, used Intel's Itanium pro ...

servers. For the M-series, blade-servers for the M1000e enclosure a specially made dual-port mezzanine card QME8142 is designed. For the ''normal'' tower- and rackservers Dell offers an OEM version of the standard QME 8152.

Cisco

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

offered Fibre Channel over Ethernet in their Unified Computing System product line via ''Virtual Interface Cards'' (VICs). These cards make it possible to create multiple virtual HBAs or NICs within each physical VIC.

Intel

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

demonstrates how the term ''Converged Network Adapter'' is really a marketing term, as they sell the X710-DA2/DA4 adapter

that don't actually support FCoE.

References

{{Reflist Fibre Channel Networking hardware Ethernet Computer storage buses