Emulex HBAs and CNAs Optimized

Emulex Corporation announced that its LightPulse Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) are optimized for use with the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed Nehalem), which combines new processor and platform architectures with new memory and I/O subsystems to provide game-changing improvements in performance and energy efficiency. To maximize I/O bandwidth, data center servers based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series can leverage the Emulex LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s HBAs to achieve the highest dual-channel I/O throughput and CPU efficiency, translating into increased performance and reduced power consumption.
 
"The explosive growth of virtualization, mission critical databases and I/O intensive applications has created demand for faster throughput and increased I/O bandwidth," said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. "We are working with Intel to ensure that Emulex connectivity solutions are thoroughly tested, interoperable and optimized for the latest Intel Xeon processors, chipsets and platforms in an effort to drive improved efficiency and performance in next-generation data centers."
 
Emulex 8Gb/s LightPulse HBAs use an advanced ASIC design to complement the Intel Xeon 5500 series platform. This combination takes full advantage of performance enhancing Intel Xeon processor 5500 series features that include PCI Express 2.0, Intel VT for Directed I/O in virtualized server environments, Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) and Intel® QuickPath Interconnect technology (QPI) for bandwidth intensive applications, resulting in dramatically improved efficiency and performance that is particularly beneficial in virtualized server environments, enabling much higher consolidation ratios and accelerated return on investment (ROI).
 
"The new Intel Xeon processor is a tremendous step forward in technology, with intelligent performance, automated energy efficiency and flexible virtualization. High speed networks, such as 8Gb/s Fibre Channel SAN solutions enabled by Emulex, handle the I/O throughput required to support large scale enterprise virtualization deployments," said Jim Pappas, Director of Server Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "As companies continue to expand their data centers, they can rest assured that Intel will continue to work with leading I/O vendors to provide them with the scalability, efficient performance and throughput necessary to keep a balanced system and their businesses running at high levels."
 
Emulex’s LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s HBAs deliver enterprise scalability and flexibility through support for MSI-X and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)-based systems, offering increased system performance through greater CPU efficiency, reduced system latency and improved I/O throughput. MSI-X is a dynamic interrupt handling mechanism in the PCI standard that is used to enable NUMA optimizations, which is ideal for virtualized server or transaction intensive environments, especially those utilizing multiprocessor and multi-core systems.
 
Emulex HBAs and CNAs also support virtual port (VPort) technology, so each virtual machine (VM) running on a server can independently access its own protected storage, while enabling customers to leverage SAN management tools and best practices at the VM level, including fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking. Emulex HBAs and CNAs are managed using a secure, automated and centralized enterprise management platform that provides a single interface for the deployment, dynamic provisioning, asset management, connectivity management, security and quality of service (QoS) of I/O connectivity that is optimized for virtualized and converged networking environments.

More about Emulex connectivity solutions for Intel Xeon processor 5500 series platforms (A PDF document)