Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs enable record performance in TPC benchmark

Industry-Leading Configuration Proves Ideal for Transaction Intensive Environments: Emulex Corporation today announced that its LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) enabled a new record-level Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmark. The Emulex LPe12000 8Gb/s HBAs, coupled with the IBM System x 3850 M2 server, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008, provides the industry-leading system configuration that produced a 14 percent increase in the total number of transactions performed per second over a similar test conducted in 2007. "This ground-breaking performance is a result of our ongoing collaboration with IBM and Microsoft to deliver the highest performance solutions that today's enterprise-class data centers demand," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corp. "Emulex's new LPe12000 8Gb/s HBAs provide the critical I/O performance and features, such as MSI-X support, that meet the increasing requirements of large transactional databases." The record-setting performance is a direct result of the compatibility and advanced features of these new products, such as the increased 8Gb/s Fibre Channel speed of Emulex LPe12000 HBAs and support for the Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) standard, featured in Microsoft Windows Server 2008. MSI-X delivers the interrupt handling mechanism that enables improved performance and is ideal for transaction intensive environments, such as Microsoft SQL Server 2008. In addition, MSI-X enables reduced host CPU utilization and greater I/O scalability by allocating each Emulex LPe12000 HBA with its own set of interrupts. "Today's IT customers expect a comprehensive development and business intelligence platform that empowers users with the high-performance information processing they require," said David Powell, director SQL Server Performance at Microsoft Corp. "SQL Server 2008, running on Windows Server 2008 with Emulex HBAs and the IBM System x server platform, delivers on the Microsoft data platform vision, enabling organizations to run their most mission-critical applications, while lowering the cost of managing the data infrastructure and delivering insights and information to all users." This record-setting performance was achieved in the TPC-E benchmark test, which is composed of a set of transactional operations designed to represent a complex On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) application environment. High transaction environments benefit from enhanced overall system performance by leveraging the increased speed and bandwidth available with Emulex LPe12000 HBAs. The TPC creates numerous benchmarking tests, which are used to calibrate the performance of the latest software and hardware components available to IT professionals. To view the results of this TPC benchmark and others, visit its Web site. To learn more about Emulex's LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs, visit its Web site.