Demand for 16Gb Fibre Channel Performance Driven by Virtualised, Cloud and Database Applications

COSTA MESA, Calif, July 30, 2012 – Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced that its new LightPulse® 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) Host Bus Adapter (HBA) technology is available for use across a broad range of Dell servers, storage and switches, designed to meet the demands of today’s highly virtualised data centres, larger and faster databases, and cloud environments. The new Dell LPe16000 (single-channel) and LPe16002 (dual-channel) 16GFC HBAs are the first 16GFC adapters available for Dell PowerEdge servers and for use with Dell PowerVault MD3620f and MD3600f storage arrays, as well as Dell PowerConnect and Dell Force10 switches.

“The growth of the total data in the storage universe will nearly triple from 2.7 zettabytes in 2012 to more than eight zettabytes by 2015, according to IDC,[1]” said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Emulex. “Given this level of continued data growth, we expect the demand for 16GFC will accelerate the transition from 8GFC to 16GFC, and being the first-to-market with the world’s fastest 16GFC HBA technology[2] for a range of Dell solutions will facilitate the storage networking needs of virtualisation, cloud and database environments.”

The Dell 16GFC adapters meet these challenges by delivering more than a million I/O operations per second (IOPS) on a single port[2] and slashing the response time by 75 per cent compared to its 8GFC predecessor.[3] Transitioning to 16GFC adapters is easy with backward compatibility to 4 and 8GFC adapters from Emulex, leveraging a common driver stack and management tools across generations.

“Leveraging Emulex 16GFC technology for the new Dell LPe16000 and LPe16002 adapters enhances our highest performing, most innovative PowerEdge Server generation ever with a streamlined upgrade path and the fastest technology available today,” said Brian Payne, executive director of server solutions at Dell. “By migrating to 16GFC, our customers can both maintain their current Fibre Channel investments and enable throughput gains that are needed to realise the potential of technologies that require a faster I/O link speed – to run the fastest databases, solid state disk, cloud, and next-generation Intel processors.”

IT professionals are demanding Dell 16GFC adapters to meet the following needs:

Support for faster databases, bigger clouds and solid state disks (SSDs): The Dell 16GFC adapters feature industry leading performance with more than five times the IOPS and twice the data throughput of 8GFC adapters,[2] providing faster response times for high transaction databases, greater virtual machine (VM) density required for cloud deployments and delivering the performance needed to match ultra-fast SSDs.

Increasing VM Densities: Dell 16GFC adapters leverage Emulex vScale™ for superior scalability, supporting  up to 255 virtual functions (VFs), 1024 Message Signal Interrupts Extended (MSI-X) and 8192 concurrent logins and open exchanges, up to four times the number supported by competing 16GFC HBAs, enabling support for more VMs per server than ever before.

Simplified and Time-Saving I/O Management: With a single driver model, the Dell 16GFC adapters can be controlled, configured and managed from a single console using Emulex OneCommand® Manager, enabling enterprise scalability with time-saving features that provide more than twice the adapter management functionality and take half the time to install and manage compared to other I/O solutions.[4] Emulex OneCommand® Manager plug-in for VMware vCenter™ Server allows users to manage Emulex adapters across hundreds of servers, natively from the VMware vCenter Server console so administrators don’t waste time juggling multiple management applications.

Reduced Data Centre CAPEX and OPEX: The Dell 16GFC adapters yield consolidation benefits including significant cost savings by enabling a reduction in cards, cables and the number of switch ports required when using a 16GFC fabric, as well as delivering associated power savings through better IOPS per watt performance. PCIe slots are also freed-up for other needs.

For more information, please visit the Emulex landing page for Dell.

[1] IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020 (#231720, December 2011)
[2] Based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing
[3] ESG Lab Validation Report, February 2012
[4] Based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing

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Read the Dell Direct Talk blog on today’s news here.

Watch a video from Dell’s Rahul Deshmukh, Product Manager, on 16GFC HBAs for Dell & Emulex customers here.

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