Emulex 16Gb fibre channel HBAs outshine competition

USA: Emulex Corp. announced the findings of a new Demartek lab evaluation1 that reveals Emulex LightPulse 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) LPe16000B Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) outperform those of its nearest competitor in throughput, CPU efficiency, reliability and power efficiency.

Demartek is an independent research firm specializing in real-world, hands-on testing and analysis. Based on these tests, the report finds that Emulex LPe16000B 16GFC HBAs are the optimal choice for servers running server virtualization, email, transactional database and data warehouse workloads.

"The Demartek testing results have proven once again that Emulex LPe16000B HBAs are the fastest, most reliable and efficient adapters available today," said Shaun Walsh , senior VP of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "We strive to provide the most accurate, extensive performance data on all of our adapters and solutions to ensure customers are well-informed when making their decisions. Emulex 16GFC adapters are absolutely the best choice for customers worldwide deploying virtualization, database and cloud environments."

The Demartek lab testing compared the Emulex LPe16000B HBAs to its nearest competitor's currently shipping 16GFC HBAs and found the following results:

* The Emulex LPe16000B is the world's fastest HBA: Emulex 16GFC HBAs enable more than 1.2 million I/O operations per second (IOPS) on a single port1, more than seven times faster than its nearest competitor. Their adapter delivered less than 200,000 IOPS on one port, and requires both ports to reach its maximum 323,000 IOPS. The Emulex architecture enables all resources to be applied to a single port when needed, ensuring SLAs are met. Better IOPS performance also results in better server utilization, because the IOPS an HBA can support impacts the workload that can be performed per server.

* Emulex LPe16000B HBAs are superior for email and database workloads: The Emulex LPe16002B runs at nearly full line rate for SQL Server/ Oracle workloads (4k and 8k block sizes) ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met. In addition, the LPe16002B is up to 124 percent faster for Oracle (4K block sizes) and up to 137 percent faster for SQL Server (8K block sizes) environments. Emulex's nearest competitor cannot achieve full line rate until it reaches 16k data block sizes, a significant deficiency for running Oracle and SQL Server workloads.

* Emulex LPe16000B HBAs enable 13 times (13x) more CPU efficiency: CPU efficiency testing evaluated the amount of I/O being performed by the HBA in relation to the server CPU utilization being consumed. The Emulex HBA is 13 times more efficient for reads, and consumes less than 30 percent of the server CPU in processing I/O while its nearest competitor's HBA consumes more than 60 percent of the server CPU in processing I/O while delivering far fewer IOPS. Consuming less CPU resources ensures the server CPU is free to perform other processing, such as applications processing.

* Emulex LPe16000B HBAs is up to 11 times (11x) more server energy efficient in terms of IOPS/watt: In testing, the Emulex LPe16000B HBAs delivered 16,527 IOPS/watt compared to its nearest competitor which could only deliver 1,487 IOPS/watt. Additionally, Emulex allows the server to consume 14 percent fewer active watts (311 vs. 356 watts) while performing more than seven times (7x) the I/O traffic. Over a three-year server life, the server using Emulex HBA can save up to one Megawatt of power compared to its nearest competitor.

* Emulex LPe16000B HBAs are the most reliable FC adapters available today: Emulex has increased reliability yet again on its newest 16GFC HBAs and has the highest published mean time between failures (MTBF), delivering enterprise class reliability, with a unmatched MTBF exceeding 10 million hours whereas its competitor has not published reliability data for its newest 16GFC HBA.