Emulex FC HBAs Support Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008

Emulex
Corporation announced its LightPulse
Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) family is supported
and available for the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and
SQL Server 2008 environments.

Emulex HBAs feature LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, which
extends the functionality of the Hyper-V virtualization
feature in Windows Server 2008 by delivering greater storage
security and enhanced management and migration of virtual
machines. Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBA technology enables
end users to effectively ‘virtualize’ SAN connections so
that each virtual machine has independent access to its
own protected storage. Hyper-V helps users reduce costs,
increase hardware utilization, optimize their infrastructure
and improve server availability.

Another feature of Windows Server 2008 supported by Emulex
is support for the Message-Signaled Interrupts (MSI) and
MSI-X (MSI eXtended) standards. MSI and MSI-X are interrupt
handling mechanisms, which enable improved application performance,
reduced host CPU utilization and greater I/O scalability
by allocating each HBA with its own set of interrupts. Internal
benchmark testing has demonstrated a 30 percent increase
in CPU efficiency in MSI supported systems configured with
Emulex LightPulse HBAs. High transaction applications, such
as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Exchange Server
2007, benefit from enhanced overall system performance by
using Emulex HBAs.

Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel HBAs also support server-to-fabric
authentication capabilities, which are designed to protect
all the access points into the SAN. Emulex’s implementation
of authentication within the HBA is the first to comply
with the Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP). Emulex
HBAs are capable of protecting end users against worldwide
port name spoofing, host masquerading and non-malicious
outages caused by human error.

"Emulex is committed to collaborating with Microsoft to
deliver state-of-the-art solutions for the enterprise-class
data center," said Mike Smith, executive vice president
of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corp. "The integration of
Emulex’s LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, MSI and MSI-X
support, and enhanced security provide our joint customers
with greater storage security, increased virtual machine
manageability, and increased efficiency."

Emulex Corporation