CLOUD

8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs Offer Industry-Leading Performance, Advanced Server Virtualization Support and Scalability: Emulex Corporation today announced that its LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) are now available with IBM System x servers. The Emulex LightPulse HBAs provide System x clients with the increased bandwidth, manageability and CPU efficiency required to support the increased deployment of virtualized servers. IBM System x is a portfolio of robust servers built on IBM X-Architecture -- IBM's blueprint for bringing innovation to Intel processor-based servers. "Emulex has taken a leadership role in tandem with IBM to introduce greater functionality and support for virtualization and blade server environments," said Mike Smith, executive vice president, worldwide marketing, Emulex Corporation. "Incorporating Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs within IBM System x servers provides customers with higher performance and throughput, enabling greater scalability within virtualized server environments." For example, Emulex recently teamed with IBM and Microsoft to enable a new record-level Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmark. When coupled with the IBM System x 3850 M2 server, the Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs produced a 14 percent increase in the total number of transactions performed per second over a similar test conducted in 2007. This record-setting performance is a direct result of the advanced features of Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs, including support for Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X), an interrupt handling mechanism, which is ideal for transaction-intensive environments. For more information on this TCP benchmark, visit: its Web site. Additionally, the new Emulex LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s PCI Express HBAs offer customers 37 percent greater transaction rates and 33 percent more effective CPU utilization over competing 8Gb/s HBA products, providing the performance and scalability necessary to support the growing number of applications running on virtualized servers and blade servers. Emulex's LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s HBAs also support Virtual HBA technology, which allows users to effectively virtualize the HBA functionality so each virtual machine running on a server can independently access its own protected storage. Emulex Virtual HBA technology also allows customers to leverage SAN management tools and best practices, such as fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking. For more information on the Emulex LPe12000 single-channel (IBM 42D0485) and LPe12002 dual-channel (IBM 42D0494) 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs for IBM System x servers, visit its Web site.