Did you know that the decision to purchase an HBA can actually enable you to do more with less? With an Emulex 8Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC) HBA you can run more virtual machines and applications per server, cut your HBA installation and management time in half to save you days each year in administration time, and protect your valuable data assets with the world’s most reliable HBAs. That’s why the decision to purchase an HBA is a strategic I/O decision that can affect the bottom line profits of your business.
Save Time and Reduce Data Center Costs With Better Management
- Twice the management capabilities and takes half the time to manage compared to other adapters¹
- Single- pane-of glass management for VMware environments with OneCommand Manager for VMware vCenter Server plug-in, available at no extra charge
Maximum I/O Performance For Servers- To Run More Applications and Virtual Machines per Server
- Powers the number one fastest database system running Oracle Database 11g²
- 37 percent better dual-port scalability³
- 33 percent better CPU utilization³
Ensure High Availability to Keep Your Business Running Worry-free
- Unsurpassed reliability with a field proven 10 million hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)
- HBAs run 20°C cooler than their QLogic counterparts³
Advanced Data Protection to Protect Against Costly and Disruptive Silent Data Corruption Events
- The only 8GFC adapter with support for T10-PI to prevent silent data corruption.
- 8Gb/s Motivation
- Extreme Performance
- Virtualization to the Max
- Coolest Reliability
- Streamlined Management
Featured Papers
Webcast
Video
Other Resources and Tools
Footnotes:
¹Emulex Labs Management Report Cards
- Emulex vs. QLogic Management Efficiency Report Card
- Emulex vs. Brocade HCM Management Efficiency Report Card
²TCP-C Benchmark Reports (Dec. 2010)
³Emulex Labs Testing
Streamlined Management
Emulex software drivers and management applications increase data center efficiency. Key features such as
- Emulex Common driver model ensures that the same Emulex drivers support your 8Gb/s, 4Gb/s, 2Gb/s HBAs.
- Emulex HBAnyware® centralized HBA management application, gives you control of all Emulex-connected servers. With extensive configuration, automation and diagnostic capabilities reducing administrative-time and increasing fun-time.
- Emulex AutoPilot® Installer dramatically reduces the time it takes to deploy a new server.
Click here for more info on Emulex Management Software.
Management Scalability Papers
8GB/s Motivation
Don’t sit on the sidelines with 8Gb Fibre Channel HBAs now shipping.
Here are 8 great reasons to get motivated to make the change now.
- Intel® Xeon® 5500 Processors are Built For 8Gb – This is the first generation of processors from Intel designed with server virtualization in mind. The use of PCI Express 2.0, Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) in virtualized server environments, Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) and Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology for bandwidth intensive applications are built to leverage the performance of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel.
- Bridge The Generation Gap – As you know, not all data centers are built with generations of products that were purchased, built and designed together. The move to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel is also about avoiding a generational gap in your data center. Why run a system loaded-up with Xeon 5500 processors with a 4Gb/s Fibre Channel card not built to maximize and leverage your other investments?
- Consolidation & Budget Cuts- Get More “Bang For Your Buck” –A move to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel now will result in fewer Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and switches to connect your servers, blades and clusters to storage. Saving you power, cooling, cables and rack space.
- 8Gb Is The Way of The Future – You know this transition is coming, and if you don’t move now, you could be taking the risk of being stuck with out-of-date gear, services issues and end-of-life issues before your new server reaches its end-of-life. No one wants to spend the time to upgrade HBAs in the field, and it is much better to make the move now.
- Virtualization Aggregation – According to IDC, the number of virtual machines (VMs) per server is expected to triple with the roll-out of Xeon 5500 processors. This means you will need three times the I/O performance, and if you know you are going to need it over the lifecycle of your new computer processing units(CPUs), it will cost less in the end to move to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel now rather than upgrading later.
- Business Continuity and Service Level Agreements – When it comes to business continuity and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), less time spent moving data is a big win. Moving to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel reduces back-up and data migration windows, which provides greater availability of business applications, and helps to improve productivity and the organization’s bottom line.
- Investment Protection – 8Gb/s Fibre Channel is backward-compatible with 2Gb/s and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel. This means you can choose 8Gb/s now for your future while also protecting the past. Emulex HBAs are fully backward compatible with your 2 and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel installed base, and feature one common driver across all Emulex HBAs.
- The Target Devices Are Shipping – Finally, the targets are shipping from HP, EMC, NetApp and many others. They are not really the drivers this time, but they help complete the story and provide a nice symmetry to the implementation.
Extreme Performance
Emulex LPe12000 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs provide superior performance. I/O benchmark results show the Emulex LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs deliver:
- Better system efficiency for I/O, freeing up CPU processing for business critical applications
- Higher maximum I/O rates, providing better support for high I/O applications and highly virtualized servers
- Better dual-channel performance, for high availability and virtualized environments
Performance Papers:
Virtualization To The Max
VMware vSphere 4, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Linux Xen, and Solaris 10 require a scalable and reliable data infrastructure for today’s server virtualization and tomorrow’s next-generation cloud computing. Emulex® LightPulse® Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) meet this requirement with high-speed, high-performance connections to storage area networks based on the proven Fibre Channel protocol.
Emulex HBAs work with these server virtualization solutions to:
- Dramatically reduce server capital and operational costs
- Increase server consolidation with improved CPU efficiency and CPU offload
- Maximize I/O bandwidth to support SLA-based applications and demand peaks
- Efficiently manage Emulex HBAs even in virtualized environments
Virtualization Papers
The Coolest Reliability
Emulex provides the most reliable and coolest Fibre Channel HBAs in the industry. The Emulex family of Fibre Channel HBAs provide the greatest reliability, averaging more than 10 million hours of field mean time between failures (MTBF). That is more than 30% greater than the nearest competitor!
Emulex LPe12000 operates 16% cooler—A test environment was created to evaluate the thermal performance of the Emulex LPe12002 and the QLogic QLE2562 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs. The results were as expected—running identical workloads, the LPe12002 I/O controller using a passive cooling device operated 20° C cooler than the QLE2562 I/O controller
without passive cooling device.
Cooler HBAs mean great reliability—A cooler operating HBA translates into better reliability. This is of significant importance to data center administrators, as properly cooled components have longer operating life, better system reliability and greater SAN availability. This becomes a more critical consideration in blade server environments. Emulex’s LPe12002 I/O controller 20° C temperature advantage translates into 166% greater reliability when compared to QLogic’s QL2562 HBA.
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