THATS WHY I/O IS STRATEGIC

At a Glance
Communication-critical applications are driving the amount of I/O traffic to new heights, causing network traffic to grow exponentially and affect your companys ability to perform at its peak. This increase in traffic, and concern about controlling costs while meeting service level requirements, has made choosing Fibre Channel (FC) or Ethernet adapters a strategic decision. Intelligent I/O solutions provided by Emulex address the Three Cs impacted today: Cost, Continuity, Complexity. This paper describes how you can implement intelligent I/O in your data center as you focus on the Three Cs.

During the five-year period from 2010 to 2015, network traffic will quadruple to 4.8 zettabytes1, driven by network-critical applications such as: Worldwide Web Cloud Virtualization Application Mobility Big Data High Availability Network Storage Network Back Up Clustered Databases Web 2.0

The Three Cs: Cost, Continuity, Complexity

1. Cost: Intelligent I/O lowers capital expenses (CAPEX) and operational expenses (OPEX) 2. Continuity: Intelligent I/O ensures availability and performance are at their peak 3. Complexity: Intelligent I/O is cloud- and virtualization-aware, with future-proofing features for a converged network environment With more than 30 years of I/O expertise, as evidenced by numerous industry technology advancements (e.g., advanced virtualization designs: N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and Universal Multi-Channel (UMC)), Emulex delivers intelligent I/O. Nine of the top ten tier 1 OEM server and storage providers resell strategic I/O solutions provided by Emulex. Emulex LightPulse 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are high performing HBAs in virtualization environments with key technologies like vEngine and vScale that ensure the highest ratio of virtual machines (VMs) and virtual ports (vPorts) per server, while GreenState technology lowers power and cooling costs.

Overwhelming networking workloads, combined with application-centric networking requirements, make network adapters strategic. In fact, CIOs around the world are quickly realizing how I/O can affect their IT budgets and overall business success2. This paper outlines the Three Cs and how they impact I/O, turning simple I/O into intelligent I/O.

1 2

Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2010-2015 InformationWeek, Research: 2012 State of the Data Center, 5/31/12

Emulex Top 3 Reasons Why I/O is Strategic

THATS WHY I/O IS STRATEGIC

Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) provided by Emulex were the first 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) adapters to deliver protocol offload for a converged 10GbE network environment, allowing iSCSI, FC over Ethernet (FCoE) and TCP transmissions over a single network. Building on decades of I/O expertise, Emulex now offers Network Xceleration (NX) solutions for High Performance Networks (HPNs) with OCe12000 10GbE adapters and FastStack software. Together, they deliver high throughput with low latency, jitter and CPU overhead.

Continuity

Cost

Intelligent I/O solutions by Emulex can dramatically lower overall costs. HBAs and UCNAs provided by Emulex offload I/O processing. They operate much more efficiently than a generalized system processor, and are complementary to the new power/performance efficiency features of the Intel Xeon E5-2600 product family. These adapters offload protocol processing from the server operating software stack, thus lowering the CPU load significantly, and resulting in far lower system power usage. This equates to lower power and cooling costs. In fact, you could lower CAPEX by purchasing a less expensive server with intelligent I/O solutions provided by Emulex, giving you extra processing power through the CPU-offload features. HBAs and UCNAs provided by Emulex also lower OPEX through OneCommand Manager, software for managing all versions of adapters provided by Emulex, with a popular VMware vCenter Server plug-in that allows adapter management from the vCenter Server console. OneCommand Manager delivers twice the management functionality in half the time. With each adapter you deploy, it doesnt take as long as competitors to install and manage it. With hundreds of adapters, intelligent I/O is now strategic to getting more done in less time.

I/O is the lifeline to your business. Your applications need data, and they need it fast and without any interruptions. Performance and availability features are required elements in intelligent I/O. With 10 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Emulex leads the industry in availability. Fibre Channel HBAs provided by Emulex deliver up to one million input/output operations per second (IOPS) over a single port for superfast storage I/O. Additionally, Emulex NX solutions deliver industry-leading 10GbE performance for specific vertical markets, such as High Frequency Trading (HFT), cyber/network security and video on demand. You can imagine how fast I/O needs to be for HFT markets think how this intelligent I/O can help your business! As your data center evolves, you need to ensure there are no I/O bottlenecks. Cloud computing results in a network scalability issue, requiring new ways for VMs to talk to each other and migrate seamlessly. Emulex, Microsoft and other industry leaders have defined the Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), or VXLAN, standard which enables an overlay (virtual) network, allowing virtualized workloads to seamlessly communicate or move across server racks, clusters and data centers. Overlay networking is another example of why I/O is strategic. Adapters need to do so much more than simple I/O in cloud environments. To ensure you have no I/O bottlenecks across your servers, Emulex OneCommand Vision is widely used to monitor application and storage I/O performance. With automated alerts and advanced I/O problemsolving features, this software application shaves days, even weeks, off the time your senior IT staff spends troubleshooting I/O issues. In just five minutes, OneCommand Vision can eliminate storage I/O as a bottleneck! It complements Emulex intelligent I/O solutions by lowering OPEX and CAPEX, while ensuring maximum application performance and availability.

Emulex Top 3 Reasons Why I/O is Strategic

THATS WHY I/O IS STRATEGIC

As you make your next I/O purchasing decision, consider this: Emulex recently announced the XE201 I/O controller that will deliver the industrys first PCIe 3.0 native 16GFC and 10GbE product, enabling you to choose a combination of up to four ports of native 8 and 16GFC, FCoE, iSCSI, RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), 10 and 40GbE for the ultimate in design flexibility. Plan for the future with Emulex intelligent I/O solutions.

Complexity

Before cloud and virtualization architectures, I/O was a simple plug-and-play solution. Today, data centers are so much more complex, with intelligent I/O required, for example, to maximize how VMs carve up the available I/O. Reducing this complexity with intelligent I/O features, such as support for UMC, allows the 10GbE pipe to be logically divided to facilitate the half-dozen network interfaces required by todays hypervisors. For FC, NPIV enables the virtualization of FC ports. NPIV is supported by Emulex OEMs (e.g., HP with Virtual Connect, IBM with Virtual Fabric) to comply with the requirements of these OEM architectures, while reducing the complexity of virtualization deployments. Data centers today require solutions that are scalable, flexible and high performing. Emulex OneCommand Manager for VMware vCenter Server underscores the importance of intelligent I/O by reducing the management time in a VMware environment, ultimately reducing complexity and providing a more scalable and flexible I/O solution. Future-proofing the data center with each hardware purchase is also critical to data centers that are moving to a converged network. I/O is strategic as you plan your purchases with your overall data center roadmap in front of you. Emulex understands how I/O needs to change over time. With a single converged network adapter that includes a pay-as-you-go model for implementing different protocols, UCNAs provided by Emulex can be deployed today for TCP/IP I/O and changed tomorrow for FCoE I/O. Investment protection is why I/O is strategic!

Next step I/O is strategic. Adapters and software provided by Emulex simplify complexity through innovation, ensure continuity with enterprise proven reliability and deliver performance based on application-specific requirements. At the same time, adapters provided by Emulex control costs through power efficiency, offload techniques and enterprise management applications. Tier 1 OEMs, such as Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP and IBM, choose FC and Ethernet adapters provided by Emulex for their enterprise IT customers. Emulex is the worldwide 10GbE port market share leader and is a dominant player in the FC HBA market3. Emulex delivers a full line of intelligent I/O solutions that meet the needs of data centers across the globe. Contact an Emulex sales representative today to find out more at sales@emulex.com.
3

Crehan Research, Server-class Adapter and LOM Market Share Report, May 2012

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