Emulex OneConnect FCoE UCNA Approaches One Million IO/s

Emulex Corporation announced that its single-chip Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) outperformed both Brocade and QLogic FCoE capable Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) in performance testing conducted by IT Brand Pulse.

                             IOPS Performance Test (Sequential Reads)

"We tested the performance of three products with Iometer set to simulate transaction intensive applications such as Exchange, SQL and Oracle that use small block transfers. Separation begins to appear at the 4K transfer size. At 1K, the Emulex card’s performance is more than double that of its nearest competitor," according to IT Brand Pulse.

The OneConnect FCoE UCNA, which is generally available through Emulex’s distribution channel, reached 919 thousand Input/Output per second (IOPS) on a single port, more than double the performance of its nearest competitor. For virtualized server environments, this leap in network performance is needed to fully realize the capacity of the new Intel Xeon-based servers, which deliver nine times more performance than the previous generation. All of Emulex’s single-chip OneConnect UCNAs enable network convergence through support of full hardware protocol offload for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) and FCoE.

“Recent market reports from the Dell’Oro Group and IT Brand Pulse show Emulex as the market leader for FCoE CNAs,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. “The performance test results from IT Brand Pulse demonstrate that Emulex’s newest FCoE UCNA clearly outperforms the competition in crucial areas that either save customers money by improving server consolidation through increased virtual machine ratios or provide them with blistering performance by dramatically improving transaction rates in transaction intensive application environments.”

The Emulex OneConnect UCNA is a single-chip, high-performance 10Gb/s Ethernet product platform that provides server connectivity for network and storage traffic with multi-function server adapters. Emulex’s OneConnect UCNAs provide a unique, pay-as-you-go model; the only server adapter with full hardware protocol offload support for TCP/IP, iSCSI and FCoE; the world’s fastest 10Gb/s Ethernet performance; and the ability to efficiently consolidate network and storage infrastructures without changing management domains.

“Until now, converged network adapters haven’t lived up to their name because they didn’t provide rich IP, iSCSI and Fibre Channel protocol support on one card. The Emulex UCNA is the first in a new class of CNAs that data center managers can deploy to consolidate their NICs, iSCSI HBAs and Fibre Channel HBAs," said Frank Berry, CEO, IT Brand Pulse. “With the general availability of all three Emulex OneConnect UCNA options, IT Brand Pulse was able to conduct a complete performance evaluation on all three protocols. In our FCoE testing we found Emulex’s UCNA performed well above its nearest competitors, particularly at the small block transfer sizes used in transaction intensive applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases. We look forward to releasing the full performance testing results on January 18, 2010, which will include NIC, iSCSI and additional FCoE performance results.”

The Emulex OneConnect UCNA architecture allows IT administrators to converge their physical networks, while maintaining their application, server, storage and security administration domains. This allows companies to reduce their costs for adapters, switch ports, cabling, power and cooling without disrupting their current management structure or network segmentation configurations.

“One of the most exciting opportunities for VARs right now is being able to deliver more efficient and optimized data center solutions to their customers that enhance IT operations across the enterprise,” said Tech Data Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Pete Peterson. “One of the technologies enabling those new efficiencies is FCoE, and the latest solutions from Emulex enable users to realize the full benefits of 10Gb/s connectivity and performance. Through our Advanced Infrastructure Solutions Division, Tech Data provides Emulex partners with the support they need to design, deploy and manage the latest data center solutions.”

Unlike competitive 10Gb/s network adapters and converged network adapters, Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA architecture allows end users to purchase the base 10Gb/s Ethernet network adapter, which includes TCP/IP and TCP Chimney hardware offload and outperforms any other 10Gb/s network adapter in the market today, and then enable full hardware offload for iSCSI or FCoE. As part of the Emulex vEngine™ technology, hardware offload and acceleration reduces server overhead and increases the number of virtual machines that can run on virtualized servers.

Emulex OneConnect high-performance 10Gb/s Ethernet Network Adapters (OCe10102-N), 10Gb/s iSCSI Adapters (OCe10102-I) and 10Gb/s FCoE Converged Network Adapters (OCe10102-F) are available through Info X and Tech Data.

To view the IT Brand Pulse Industry Brief on its FCoE Performance Testing (in PDF)