WHITE PAPER
QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 FC HBAs
Double Performance and Flexibility
Eliminate I/O Bottlenecks for Enterprise Applications
and Accelerate Virtualization and Cloud Deployments
Key Findings
Support for increased workloads, acceleration of application performance, and meeting the growing demands placed on the enterprise
data center is key in the selection and deployment of a 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter with the right architecture to scale and
support robust databases, mail servers, and secondary storage.
• Performance: QLogic delivers double the performance of previous-generation adapters with more than 1.2 million IOPS and 3200
MBps bidirectional throughput.
• Application Throughput: QLogic performs better than Emulex® in Oracle® and Microsoft Exchange Server® environments.
• Superior Business Scalability: The QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter delivers higher performance scalability
compared with the Emulex LPe16000 Adapter in Microsoft® Windows®.
• Unparalleled Flexibility: QLogic I/OFlex™ technology—any I/O, any network.
Executive Summary
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise businesses are under increasing pressure to expand IT
services while maintaining low infrastructure and service costs.
Challenging IT environments and changes in both technology and
application delivery make it imperative that IT administrators choose
their infrastructure to maximize the return on investment. QLogic
delivers the performance, flexibility, scalability, and investment
protection to meet the needs of the enterprise data center. QLogic is
the trusted market leader of Fibre Channel Adapters.
QLogic compared the overall performance of the 2600 Series 16Gb
Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapters with Emulex adapters in a real-world
Industry Environment
Converged networks and traditional Fibre Channel SANs using 16Gb will
be how enterprise businesses will meet the challenges of IT trends and
advancements in applications and technology.
IT Trends
Explosive growth in the number and complexity of Web 2.0, databases,
backup, big data, cloud computing, and other enterprise applications are
driving workloads exponentially in the data center. There are more users,
more devices, and more data than ever before.
SAN environment with maximum throughput workloads. These tests
highlight the advantage delivered by the QLogic 2600 Series architecture
in both Microsoft Exchange Server and Oracle environments compared
with Emulex adapters.
QLogic I/OFlex technology provides a free, field-configurable firmware
upgrade, enabling IT administrators to define personality (16Gb Fibre
Channel, 10Gb Ethernet, or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)) on a
single adapter with the highest flexibility and investment protection.
Customer Benefits
The benefits of 10Gb Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are well understood.
Business managers are experiencing lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
and leaner infrastructures. For organizations that continue to invest in Fibre
Channel SANs, 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel brings added performance and
functionality. 16Gb Fibre Channel is 40 percent faster than 10G Ethernet
FCoE and two times faster than 8Gb Fibre Channel. Therefore, 16Gb Gen
5 Fibre Channel improves your price per performance, lowers your power
per gigabit, and increases PCIe slot conservation. Also, 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre
Channel backward compatibility ensures investment protection.
The infrastructure in the data center is becoming increasingly complex
due to mixed deployment models: discrete, virtual, and cloud. For these
reasons, data center managers need to deliver a high performance and
reliable infrastructure that is simple to manage and lowers costs.
Application and Technology Advancements
Data center managers are experiencing tremendous application growth and
increased use of server virtualization. Enterprise applications that require
high-performance bandwidth include database, backup, cloud computing,
data migration, disaster recovery, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
Additional technology advancements include multi-core processors,
more memory, server workloads, solid state drives, and PCIe® 3.0. These
advancements allow greater agility and increase in optimization using
new architectures. Networked storage is a key component to solving
the demand for higher bandwidth. Converged networks and traditional
Fibre Channel SANs using 16Gb is how enterprise businesses will meet
these challenges.
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QLogic I/OFlex Technology
The QLogic FlexSuite network adapter platform has the flexibility to power
native 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel or 10Gb Ethernet converged networks from
the same hardware. QLogic I/OFlex technology enables IT administrators to
build out the infrastructure of their data centers at their own pace. QLogic
provides the versatility to handle any protocol, any host, any storage, and
any fabric—addressing the demands of the rapidly evolving enterprise.
I/OFlex is a free, field-configurable firmware upgrade that enables IT
administrators to define personality (16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel, 10GbE, or
FCoE) on a single adapter.
WHITE PAPER
QLogic FlexSuite Adapter Advantages
QLogic 2600 Series FlexSuite Adapters offer unprecedented advantages.
• The Ultimate in Performance
• Unparalleled Flexibility
• Investment Protection
• Simplified Management
• Leadership, Confidence, and Trust
More specifically, the benefits are as follows.
The Ultimate in Performance
• 1.2 million IOPS
• PCIe 3.0
• Enhanced server scalability
Unparalleled Flexibility
• QLogic I/OFlex technology—any I/O, any network (dual personality)
• Industry’s only adapter supporting fully offloaded concurrent
multiprotocol support (QLogic ConvergeFlex® technology)
• Granular quality of service (QoS) through QLogic VMflex™ technology
(NPIV and NIC partitioning)
• Optimized for virtualization
• Cloud computing deployment—provides granular QoS and bandwidth
allocation
• Heterogeneous infrastructure
Investment Protection
Simplified Management
• Pervasive interoperability—any form factor, any protocol, any operating
system, any hypervisor
• Simplified adapter management
– QConvergeConsole® (QCC) GUI and CLI
– QCC vCenter™ plug-in
– APIs
Leadership, Confidence, and Trust
• Proven field-hardened stack
• 13 million Fibre Channel/FCoE ports deployed in data centers
• Eighth consecutive year of Fibre Channel Adapter market share
leadership (2011)
• Reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS)
• Industry’s longest warranty—5 years
QLogic’s High Availability Architecture
QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel architecture continues
to provide complete port-level isolation across its dual-port ASIC.
The architecture, unlike the one from its nearest competitor, provides
an independent function, firmware image, transmit/receive buffers,
on chip CPU, DMA channels, and firmware image for each port. This
enables complete port-level isolation, eliminates errors and firmware
crashes to propagate across both ports, and provides deterministically
predictive and scalable performance across both ports. This is extremely
essential for enterprise data centers—assuring five nines availability for
mission-critical applications.
• QLogic SecureFlex technology ensures highest data integrity (with
overlapping protection domains (OPD) and T10 ready)
• Backward compatible—auto-negotiate 16/8/4Gb Fibre Channel (same
stack)
• Future proofed for converged networking (FCoE, iSCSI, and
TCP/IP)
• Multiprotocol
• Qualified with major OEMs
• Certified with more than 10,000 products
QLogic Outperforms Emulex
The QLogic Common Performance Test Platform is used to provide
performance benchmark results; providing IT administrators and system
architects visibility into product performance in a clear and unbiased
manner. QLogic performs testing to evaluate adapter capabilities and
adapter performance in real-world enterprise application environments.
QLogic has compared the out-of-box performance of its 2600 Series
16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter with the Emulex LPe16000, using the
test setup described in the QLogic Technology Brief, QLogic Platform and
Methodology for Product Evaluations1. The results of this testing, which
emulates real-world Oracle and Microsoft Exchange Server workloads
using the QLogic Common Test Platform, are presented in this white paper.
__________
1
For the QLogic Technology Brief, QLogic Platform and Methodology for Product Evaluations, visit the following site
http://www.qlogic.com/Resources/Pages/Resources.aspx. Select “Adapters.” Under Product Literature, select
“Technology Briefs.”
SN0430913-00 Rev. C 07/13 3
QLogic continues to be the industry leader in delivering high-performance
I/O solutions to data center customers. The IOPS and throughput of the
QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter is best in class and
provides an unprecedented level of high performance, superior scalability,
and enhanced reliability that exceeds the requirements for next-generation
data centers. The results of the benchmark tests demonstrate the I/O
performance and scalability advantages of the QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb
Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter over the Emulex LPe16000 16Gb Adapter in
real-world deployment environments.
Higher Performance
WHITE PAPER
For out-of-the-box transactional performance, the QLogic 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre
Channel Adapter performed almost 40 percent better than the Emulex 16Gb
Fibre Channel Adapter (Figure 1). The figure also shows that the QLogic
2600 Series delivers 1.2 million IOPS in a Windows environment.
Figure 1. QLogic Delivers 1.2 Million IOPS
The QLogic adapter delivers the best performance for enterprise
applications, such as Oracle databases and Microsoft Exchange, while
running multiple offloaded protocols, making it an ideal solution for highdensity virtualized and cloud computing environments. Figure 2 shows the
throughput results across a sweep of block sizes. The QLogic 2600 Series
outperformed the Emulex LPe16000 at real-world workload (block sizes)
used in the enterprise data center. Typical workloads for Oracle database
environments are 4KB and 8KB block sizes. The figure shows that QLogic
has more than 30 percent higher throughput over Emulex. For Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010 (typical block sizes of 32KB), QLogic performed up
to 88 percent better than Emulex.
Figure 2. QLogic Delivers Higher Performance with External Applications
The QLogic 2600 Series Fibre Channel Adapter delivers the best application
performance, making it an ideal solution for high-density virtualized and
cloud computing environments.
Superior Business Scalability
For high throughput applications, the QLogic 2600 Series Fibre Channel
Adapter delivers higher performance compared with the Emulex LPe16000
Adapter in Microsoft Windows. As business grows and more ports are
added, the QLogic adapter’s throughput scales by 85 percent, as shown
in Figure 3, which is significantly better compared with Emulex dual-port
scalability.
Figure 3. QLogic Delivers 85% More Transactions from Single Port to Dual Port
SN0430913-00 Rev. C 07/13 4
WHITE PAPER
Summary
QLogic continues to be the industry leader in delivering high-performance
I/O solutions to data center customers. The performance of the QLogic
2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter is best in class and
provides highest performance, superior scalability, unparalleled flexibility,
and enhanced reliability.
Meeting the demands of more data, more devices, and more users than
ever before and planning for the growing data, application, and storage
requirements dictates the need for high-performance I/O delivery.
IT administrators know that choosing the right adapter for their SAN
infrastructure can have a strong impact on the performance, flexibility,
and scalability of their enterprise data centers. The results discussed in
this white paper demonstrate that QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre
Channel Adapters deliver the requirements needed in the data center
and outperform and provide higher scalability than Emulex LPe16000
Adapters in real-world environments. This allows IT administrators to set
their convergence strategy at their own pace. The QLogic 2600 Series
Fibre Channel Adapter will be in the data center throughout the lifetime of
the server.
Learn More
QLogic offers complete solutions to some of the most complex issues
facing the data center. To visit the QLogic solutions Web page, click “QLogic
Solutions” under the Solutions tab at www.qlogic.com.
QLogic has created demonstrations that showcase QLogic technologies,
such as NIC Partitioning and the application of QoS in a VMware®
ESXi 5.x environment using the QLogic Converged Network Adapter.
In addition, demonstrations of technology performance or proof
of concepts can be configured for your specific environment. To
register for a demonstration of QLogic product capabilities, visit
www.qlogic.com/solutions/Pages/qos.aspx and click “Schedule a future
‘live’ demo.”
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Disclaimer
Reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the validity and accuracy of these performance tests. QLogic Corporation is not liable for any error
in this published white paper or the results thereof. Variation in results may be a result of change in configuration or in the environment. QLogic
specifically disclaims any warranty, expressed or implied, relating to the test results and their accuracy, analysis, completeness or quality.
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www.qlogic.com
© 2013 QLogic Corporation. Specifications are subject to change without notice. All rights reserved worldwide. QLogic, the QLogic logo, ConvergeFlex, I/OFlex, QConvergeConsole, and VMflex are trademarks or registered trademarks of QLogic Corporation. Emulex is a registered trademark
of Emulex Corporation. Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. PCIe is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG Corporation. VMware and vCenter are registered trademarks of
VMware, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information supplied by QLogic Corporation is believed to be accurate and reliable. QLogic Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors in this document. QLogic
Corporation reserves the right, without notice, to make changes in product design or specifications.
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