• Provides a class of adapters that meets all Fibre Channel and
Ethernet connectivity needs in cloud-enabled data centers
• Supports Gen 5 Fibre Channel and 10GbE DCB connectivity for
TCP/IP, iSCSI, and FCoE with QLogic AnyIO® technology
• Consolidates I/O devices and optimizes QoS with QLogic vFLink
technology
OVERVIEW
To keep pace with dynamic and growing business demands, many
organizations are transitioning their data centers to private cloud
architectures to leverage the many benets of virtualization. This
approach enables them to consolidate, scale, simplify, and automate
their IT resources to increase business agility while reducing capital and
operational expenditures. The QLogic BR-1860, designed for today’s data
centers, simplies the journey to the private cloud.
Server virtualization continues to be a key technology for enabling private
cloud architectures. Organizations worldwide are taking virtualization to
the next level, increasing virtual machine (VM) densities and virtualizing
mission-critical workloads. This trend is increasing demand for shared
storage and atter, more scalable networks—as well as higher bandwidth
and I/O capacity for client/server and storage networks.
• Enhanced virtualization support, including Windows Server®
2012 Virtual Fibre Channel and network QoS (bandwidth
management) functionality
• Centralized management through single pane-of-glass by
integration with Brocade® Network Advisor
A SINGLE ADAPTER FOR ALL CONNECTIVITY NEEDS
Available in single-port and dual-port models, the BR-1860 features
QLogic AnyIO technology, making it the industry’s rst multiprotocol
server connectivity product designed for highly virtualized, cloud-enabled
data centers. The BR-1860 is a new class of adapters that combines a
Gen 5 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter with a 10-gigabit Ethernet (GbE)
Converged Network Adapter and a NIC to support native Fibre Channel,
TCP/IP, data center bridging (DCB) Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet
(FCoE), and iSCSI running simultaneously in a single product.
To help address that demand, the BR-1860 Fabric Adapter meets all
the connectivity needs of cloud-enabled data centers while providing
unmatched performance, application-aware services, unied
management, and reduced cost and complexity. It is the simplest, most
exible, and most powerful server connectivity adapter designed to extend
fabric services to VMs and applications in highly demanding virtualized
environments (Figure 1).
BR0058006-00 Rev. A 03/14 1
Gen 5 Fibre Channel is the purpose-built, data center-proven network
infrastructure for storage, delivering unmatched reliability, simplicity,
and 16Gbps performance. The BR-1860 Fabric Adapter with Gen5
Fibre Channel unleashes the full potential of high-density server
virtualization, cloud architectures, and next-generation storage.
QLogic BR-1860
QLogic BR-1860 Fabric Adapters
EthernetFibre Channel
Data Sheet
I/O Virtualization (IOV) and Virtual Switching
The BR-1860 supportsQLogic virtual Fabric Link (vFLink) technology,
which partitions a single adapter into as many as eight virtual adapters
called vNICs. This is done in hardware by using multiple physical functions
(PFs) at the PCIe® bus level, appearing as separate physical devices at the
OS level. These virtual links can be assigned minimum and/or maximum
bandwidth levels allocated in 100Mbps increments, with a maximum of
10Gbps for Ethernet. This helps organizations overcome the proliferation of
adapters in virtual environments while maintaining management isolation
and quality of service (QoS) for different types of networks, including
production, backup, management, or live migration (Figure 2).
Organizations have the exibility to choose, on a port-by-port basis, the
adapter type and connectivity protocol that are most appropriate for their
applications and their business requirements. This unmatched exibility
allows organizations to standardize on a single adapter for all of their
connectivity needs. IT departments can realize capital and operational
savings by consolidating multiple lower-speed Fibre Channel Host Bus
Adapters and 1GbE NICs into a single adapter, acquiring space-efcient
1U rack-mount servers, connecting to existing Fibre Channel and Ethernet
networks without requiring additional switch ports, and future-proong
their data centers for a seamless transition to multiprotocol networks.
Delivering full-duplex, line-rate 16Gbps Fibre Channel and 10GbE speeds,
and over one million IOPS per dual-port adapter for storage applications—
including Fibre Channel, FCoE, and iSCSI—the QLogic BR-1860 is the ideal
platform to support the most demanding mission-critical workloads in the
largest data centers. The BR-1860 supports full FCoE protocol ofoad as
well as stateless networking ofoads for 10GbE, including TCP checksum
and segmentation ofoads for improved performance and more efcient
CPU utilization.
DESIGNED FOR THE PRIVATE CLOUD
Virtualization is transforming the data center, essentially moving the
access layer of the network into the server. In addition to virtualizing I/O
devices to allow them to be shared by the VMs, hypervisors have become,
by necessity, software-based Ethernet switches that provide networking
services for VMs—using CPU cycles and hindering virtualization scalability
and performance. Even with the most powerful processors, at 16Gbps
Fibre Channel and 10GbE speeds, hypervisors simply cannot keep up with
I/O, and line-rate performance becomes impossible to achieve.
To further improve performance in virtual environments, VMs can bypass
the hypervisor and access I/O devices directly, leveraging server chipset
technologies such as Intel® virtualization technology for directed I/O (VT-d)
or AMD® I/O virtualization (AMD-Vi).
The BR-1860 will help organizations overcome this limitation through
its ability to support the PCI-SIG® single root input/output virtualization
(SR-IOV) specication1, which extends QLogic vFLink technology to support
up to 255 virtual fabric links. SR-IOV utilizes PCIe virtual functions (VFs),
which are lightweight PCI functions that are assigned to the VMs while
the hypervisor retains control of the underlying PF. SR-IOV enables an
efcient sharing of I/O devices for VMs as well as direct I/O for increased
performance (Figure 3).
By implementing virtual machine optimized ports (VMOPs), the BR-1860
leverages hypervisor multiqueue technologies such as VMware® NetQueue
and Microsoft® VMQ to ofoad the incoming network packet classication
and sorting tasks from the hypervisor onto the adapter, freeing the CPU
and enabling line-rate performance.
BR0058006-00 Rev. A 03/14 2
1 SR-IOV is hardware capable.
QLogic BR-1860
VM1
VF
DriverVFDriverVFDriver
VF1VF2
Figure 3. SR-IOV enables efcient sharing of I/O resources with direct I/O for enhanced
VM2VM3
.....
PF
Hypervisor
VF3VFn
Physical Function
QLogic BR-1860 Fabric Adapter
performance
Driver
.....
VMn
VF
Driver
Data Sheet
• Integration into Brocade's Brocade Network Advisor (BNA):
Provides customizable health and performance dashboard views to
pinpoint problems faster, simplify SAN conguration and management,
and reduce operational costs.
• Critical diagnostic and monitoring capabilities: Helps ensure early
problem detection and recovery.
• Forward error correction (FEC): Enables recovery from bit errors in
ISLs, enhancing transmission reliability and performance.
• Credit loss recovery: Helps overcome performance degradation and
congestion due to buffer credit loss.
Diagnostic ports (D_Ports) are a port type that enables administrators to
quickly identify and isolate optics and cable problems, reducing fabric
deployment and diagnostic times. Organizations can also use Brocade's
ClearLink diagnostics to run a variety of tests through QLogic Host
Connectivity Manager (HCM), QLogic BCU CLI, or Brocade's BNA to test
ports, SFPs, and cables for faults, latency, and distance.
The BR-1860 also incorporates a built-in virtual Layer 2 Ethernet switch, or
virtual Ethernet bridge (VEB), to ofoad the hypervisor from all of the interVM trafc switching tasks, delivering better network performance for VMs
while freeing the CPU for additional application processing.
Extend Fabric Services to the Server and Applications
The BR-1860 supports Brocade'sServer Application Optimization (SAO)
technology to extend the intelligence and fabric services of industryleading Brocade Fibre Channel fabrics into servers. N_Port trunking
extends the ISL trunking capability from the Brocade switches into the
server, combining two 16Gbps links in a dual-port adapter into a single
logical 32Gbps connection with frame-level load balancing for unmatched
levels of performance and fault tolerance.
Brocade SAO also extends QoS from the fabric to the VM and application
level, enabling organizations to virtualize mission-critical applications
and scale virtualization environments with condence. Leveraging virtual
channel technology in the Brocade switch and QLogic adapter ASICs,
QoS ensures that mission-critical workloads will not be impacted by
congestion or misbehaving devices, helping organizations more efciently
meet application service level agreements (SLAs).
Unprecedented Visibility and Insight Across the Storage Network with
Advanced Monitoring and Diagnostics
Offering innovative diagnostic, monitoring, and management capabilities,
the BR-1860 helps administrators avoid problems, maximize application
performance, and reduce operational costs with the following technologies:
• Diagnostic port (D_Port) support: Ensures optical and signal integrity
for Gen 5 Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment
and support of high-performance fabrics. It leverages the ClearLink
diagnostic port (D_Port) capabilities of Brocade's Gen 5 Fibre Channel
switch platforms.
D_Port enabled diagnostic ports can be congured either explicitly by
the user in static mode or forced by the switch port in dynamic mode.
Dynamic mode automatically congures D_Ports on the adapter from
the switch, streamlining deployment and reducing operational overhead.
To take advantage of Brocade's ClearLink diagnostics functionality, the
BR-1860 needs to be in Host Bus Adapter mode and requires 16Gbps
optics.
In addition, the BR-1860 extends credit recovery and FEC from the SAN
fabric to the server level. Extending these fabric services to the server
improves link resiliency and enhances overall application performance and
availability.
The BR-1860 is hardware-capable to support the upcoming virtual
Ethernet port aggregator (VEPA) standard as dened by the IEEE
Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB)
switched by the access layer switch in the network. Combined with QLogic
vFLink technology, VEPA logically extends the physical Ethernet switch all
the way to the VMs. This allows networking policies to be dened with VM
granularity and enables the delivery of VM-aware services and VM-level
trafc monitoring.
Optimal Support for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2
By supporting Windows Server® 2012, the BR-1860 enhances its ability
to support Windows-based virtual workloads and provides network
administrators with policy-based tools to manage trafc on the virtual
and physical networks. Furthermore, its support of the Hyper-V® virtual
Fibre Channel feature enables direct connectivity to Fibre Channel SANs
from within a Hyper-V VM, allowing Fibre Channel SANs to seamlessly
support Windows-based virtualized workloads. Support for Fibre Channel
in Hyper-V guests also includes support for many high-availability features,
such as virtual SANs, clustered VMs, live migration, and multipath I/O
(MPIO).
specication. VEPA allows inter-VM trafc to be
802.1Qbg
BR0058006-00 Rev. A 03/14 3
QLogic BR-1860
Through its support of Windows Server 2012 policy-based QoS, the
BR-1860 enables administrators to specify network bandwidth controls
based on application type, users, and servers for the physical network.
In addition, support of Hyper-V QoS enables cloud hosting providers and
enterprises to deliver predictable network performance for multiple types
of trafc for VMs using BR-1860 adapters running in DCB mode.
SIMPLIFYING SERVER DEPLOYMENT WITH DYNAMIC FABRIC
PROVISIONING
Dynamic fabric provisioning (DFP) allows organizations to eliminate fabric
reconguration when adding or replacing servers through the virtualization
of host world wide names (WWNs). It combines Brocade switch and QLogic
adapter technology to reduce or eliminate the need to modify zoning or
LUN masking. In addition, DFP enables pre-provisioning of virtual WWNs,
helping organizations eliminate time-consuming steps when deploying
new equipment or moving devices within a switch.
CENTRALIZED ADAPTER MANAGEMENT
QLogic’s Host Connectivity Manager (HCM) is an easy-to-use adapter
management tool for conguring, monitoring, and troubleshooting the
QLogic BR-series adapters. HCM enables server administers to quickly
congure BR-series adapters locally or remotely.
Data Sheet
HCM scans the SAN environment to discover visible storage resources
and display target LUNs. A simple to use graphical tree view provides fast
access to the managed Host Bus Adapters, Converged Network Adapters,
ports, and target storage resources. HCM also provides notications of
various conditions and problems through a user-dened event lter.
In addition to providing a graphical interface, QLogic also provides
a powerful command line interface, BCU CLI, for scripting and task
automation.
For holistic data center-wide management, QLogic HCM is tightly
integrated with Brocade Network Advisor (BNA) to provide end-toend conguration and management of the entire SAN infrastructure.
Administrators can launch QLogic HCM from within BNA to provide singlepane-of-glass management of QLogic BR-series adapters and Brocade
switches.
QLogic also provides open APIs and standards-based interfaces for
integration with popular third-party applications.
MAXIMIZING INVESTMENTS
To help optimize technology investments, QLogic and its partners offer
complete solutions that include professional services, technical support,
and education. For more information, contact a QLogic sales partner or
visit www.qlogic.com.
BR0058006-00 Rev. A 03/14 4
QLogic BR-1860
Data Sheet
Fibre Channel Specications
Data Rate
• 14.025Gbps (1600MBps); 8.5Gbps
(800MBps); 4.25Gbps (400MBps); 2.125Gbps
(200MBps) auto-sensing (perport); full duplex
• EN60950-1; EN55022 Class B and EN55024;
TÜV Bauart, CE Mark
Australia, New Zealand
• EN55022 and CISPR22 Class B or AS/NZS CISPR22;
C-Tick
Russia
• IEC60950-1; 51318.22-99 and .24-99; GOST Mark
Korea
• KN22 and KN24; KC Mark Class B
Taiwan
• CNS 13438(95) Class A; BSMI Mark
Ordering Information
Distance Support
• 33m at 10Gbps on 62.5/125μm OM1 MMF
• 82m at 10Gbps on 50/125μm OM2 MMF
• 300m at 10Gbps on 50/125μm OM3 MMF
• 10km at 10Gbps on 9/125μm SMF
Frame Sizes
• All standard Ethernet frame sizes supported,
including 9,600 byte jumbo frames and mini-jumbo
frames
BR0058006-00 Rev. A 03/14 5
Environmental and Power Requirements
Airow
• 45 linear feet per minute (LFM)
Operating Temperature
• 0ºC to 55ºC /32ºF to 131ºF (dry bulb)
Non-Operating Temperature
• −43ºC to 73ºC/−40ºF to 163ºF (dry bulb)
BR-1860-1
• Ships in a single pack with low-prole and standard
BR-1860-2
• Ships in a single pack with low-prole and standard
brackets
brackets
xxx
(single port)
xxx
(dual port)
QLogic BR-1860
Data Sheet
NOTICES
Brocade Network Advisor (BNA) is a management solution from Brocade that enables unied management across SAN and IP networks. Brocade Server
Application Optimization (SAO) is an optional feature available on Brocade switches. SAO works with QLogic BR series adapters to enhance application
performance and VM scalability. Licenses for Brocade's BNA and SAO products can be purchased separately through Brocade Corporation.
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 conguration or in the environment. QLogic specically
disclaims any warranty, expressed or implied, relating to the test results and their accuracy, analysis, completeness or quality.