Emulex LightPulse 16Gb FC HBAs

Emulex Corporation announced its LightPulse 16Gb FC HBAs, Emulex’s ninth generation of FC adapters, deliver over one million IOPS on a single port, enabling high-performance I/O for high density, business-critical cloud and virtualized data centers.

The new LPe16000 HBAs are based on the Emulex Engine XE201 I/O Controller (IOC), a quad-port converged fabric controller that supports 10GbE, 16GFC and up to 40GbE-based network convergence.

The XE201 IOC offers vScale workload-based performance and scalability with an eight-core architecture that supports pooling of resources for dynamic allocation to multiple protocols. It also supports vPath virtual I/O support for emerging I/O virtualization standards that allow data to be forwarded between collocated VMs while ensuring I/O traffic isolation, and GreenState power efficiency.

With the announcement of Emulex’s 16GFC HBAs, coupled with the introduction of 16GFC switches and anticipated introduction of 16GFC arrays in 2012, the 16GFC ecosystem is maturing. Purchasing 16GFC storage infrastructure equipment today provides investment protection, added performance – even in 8GFC environments – and key features that improve virtualization, management, power efficiency and data protection. Applications that will benefit from 16GFC technology include online transaction processing databases, data warehouses, and backup/restore applications, in both traditional and virtualized cloud deployments.

"The LPe16000 family of adapters delivers more than one million IOPS on a single port, enabling high-performance I/O for high-density, business-critical cloud and virtualized data centers," said Shaun Walsh, vice president of marketing, Emulex. "This adapter is about more than just another FC speed bump, it is designed to support next-generation cloud and virtualization environments with our vScale programmable ASIC technology, VM scalability, enhanced quality of service, data integrity and performance management features."

LPe16000 key features and benefits:

• Performance and scalability for cloud and virtualized environments: Emulex LPe16000 adapters enable more than five times the IOPS1 and twice the data throughput of 8GFC adapters.
• GreenState Power Efficiency: GreenState power management, allows for selective dynamic hibernation, advanced thermal and power instrumentation. Combined with port and cable consolidation benefits, this delivers up to up to three times better IOPS performance per watt over previous generations1.
• Manageable I/O: With a single driver model, Emulex I/O solutions can be controlled, configured and managed from a single console using OneCommand Manager, enabling enterprise scalability with time-saving features that provide more than twice the management capabilities in half the time compared to other I/O solutions. OneCommand Manager plug-in for VMware vCenter Server also lets users manage Emulex adapters across hundreds of servers, natively from the VMware vCenter Server console.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Emulex OneCommand Vision monitors the critical I/O performance and availability component of application performance and integrates with Microsoft System Center, allowing proactive SLA-related alerts to be managed directly from System Center. In addition, Emulex’s PRO Pack provides real-time bandwidth monitoring of Emulex adapters through Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
• Data Center Simplicity: Emulex LPe16000 adapters yield consolidation benefits by enabling a reduction in cards and cables, while saving PCIe slots for other needs. Emulex LPe16000 adapters are also backward compatible with 4 and 8GFC environments, protecting customers current infrastructure investments.
• BlockGuard Data Protection Offload: Support for Emulex BlockGuard T10 Protection Information (T10-PI) provides data protection against silent data corruption. The LPe16000 series adapters are Emulex’s second-generation of adapters supporting the T10-PI standard.

Emulex has been sampling its 16GFC technology with OEMs for several months. Emulex single-channel LPe16000 and dual-channel LPe16002, adapters will be available in the fourth quarter 2011.

"Our customers are already adding 16GFC to their SAN roadmaps, given FC’s inherent reliability, performance and security," said Deirdre Wassell, Director Solutions Marketing, EMC Corporation. "The new class of Emulex FC adapters will once again serve our customers’ growing I/O needs as they transform IT through virtualization and cloud technologies."

"The new Emulex 16GFC adapters offer the performance and scalability characteristics necessary to support high-density, virtualized servers being deployed today, and next-generation cloud deployments beginning to take root in the enterprise," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Emulex continues to deliver innovative solutions to address customers evolving architectures, by offering more I/O, performance and speed, with a proven FC portfolio."

"With exponential data growth, companies can’t afford bandwidth bottlenecks that disrupt workflow or limit functionality of critical applications such as cloud deployments, virtualized servers and data mining," said Neil MacDonald, vice president, Data Center Development Unit, Storage, HP. "The integration of HP Converged Infrastructure and Emulex 16Gb FC optimize data center capacity while increasing application performance and functionality."

"Customers are looking towards 16Gb FC to achieve greater speed, efficiency and reliability as they transition to flexible and efficient shared IT infrastructures," said Patrick Rogers, vice president, Corporate Alliances at NetApp, Inc. "NetApp is focused on innovating through its collaboration with industry leaders such as Emulex to help customers maximize next-generation data center technologies today and in the future."

"Emulex FC adapters have long been utilized within Oracle storage environments, and as customers transition to 16Gb FC, they can once again turn to Emulex for their connectivity needs," said Jason Schaffer, senior director, Disk Storage Product Management, Oracle Corp. "These new Emulex adapters support virtualized storage environments, which combined with integrated Oracle Solaris support, help improve data reliability and integrity."

"As customers continue to deploy the VMware vSphere cloud infrastructure platform, better performance and increased scalability are must-have components," said Parag Patel, Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "Emulex 16GFC adapters are well-matched to our virtualization and cloud portfolio, and with Emulex OneCommand Manager for VMware vCenter Server, they offer integrated and centralized management directly from VMware vSphere."