Emulex 8Gb HBAs for Windows Server 2008 R2

Emulex Corporation announced that its LightPulse Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are now available for new Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 environments. Customers can now take advantage of Emulex enhancements that complement the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 improvements including superior scalability and storage performance.

Windows Server 2008 R2 expands on Windows Server 2008 delivering new functionality and improvements with focus in five primary areas: Web resource, virtualization, management enhancements, Windows 7 integration, and scalability and reliability. The new and updated scalability and reliability features include better leverage of sophisticated CPU architectures and path optimization for storage. The CPU architectures are Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) designs, such as those used in Intel Nehalem-based servers. New design and optimizations for storage platforms and the associated driver stack enhance NUMA I/O processing in Windows Server 2008 R2.

“With each Microsoft release we continue to enhance the performance and scalability of our adapter architecture for customers deploying Microsoft Windows Server environments,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. “Together with Microsoft, we’re delivering integrated enhancements that enable workloads to run faster and remain at optimum performance levels even when more workloads are added.”

Emulex LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs support for Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) and Storport miniport enhancements, deliver improved scalability, efficiency and performance using Windows Server 2008 R2. When utilized in a Hyper-V server virtualization environment, Emulex’s 8Gb/s HBAs deliver the scalability and performance needed with the associated increase virtual machine I/O requirements.

“Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers improvements in storage performance for physical and virtual environments,” said Eric Jewett, director of Windows Server Marketing, Microsoft. “By utilizing Emulex adapters in Windows Server 2008 R2 environments, customers may benefit from a reduction in IT costs and improvements in business continuity.”

Emulex is a member of the Microsoft Interop Vendor Alliance and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with HBAs that support Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows NT operating systems. Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel HBAs are also incorporated into Microsoft Technology Centers worldwide, where Microsoft customers can explore a wide variety of options for easily and reliably connecting servers to SANs.

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