A6826A - PCI-X Dual port 2Gb/s Fibre Channel Adapter Performance Paper for PCI Platforms

Introduction
This paper provides basic I/O performance and scalability information for the A6826A dual-channel 2Gb Fibre
Channel adapter on HP’s PCI platforms. A series of tests were conducted to evaluate the adapter’s performance
on HP servers, namely rp5450, rp7400, rp8400 and Superdome. The tests measured the IOPS and throughput of
single and multiple adapters.
This paper addresses the performance capabilities of A6826A when used with the above mentioned HP
platforms. The paper also discusses the system setup considerations to obtain the maximum possible performance
from A6826A on these platforms.
This paper focuses on the following topics:
• Test results: Single and multiple adapters performance data, which include the IOPS and throughput
for single and dual ports, will be discussed.
• Scalability: Multiple adapter scalability tests on systems namely Superdome, rp8400, rp7400 and
rp5450 will be discussed.
• System configuration guidelines: Superdome, rp8400, rp7400 and rp5450 system configurations
and recommendations will be discussed.
• Test details: HP’s products used, test setup, benchmark tool used and system configuration in the test
setup will be discussed.
Executive summary
A6826A on HP mid range and high end platforms offers an excellent SAN solution. A6826A provides read
throughput of 195MB/s, and write throughput of 188MB/s on a single port. With dual ports a read throughput of
390MB/s, and write throughput of 368MB/s are achieved.
A6826A performance summary
single port two ports
Operation
read write bd* read write bd
iops 35530 21300 20300 70100 42700 31300
achieved 195 188 351 390 368 412 **
throughput
(MB/s)
% of 2Gb/s FC
theoretical max
97.5 94 87.7 97.5 92 51.1
NOTE:
*bd: Bidirectional Operation.
**The full duplex throughput is limited by 66MHz PCI bandwidth (528 MB/s).
The above performance data is obtained on A6826A seated in a 66MHz PCI slot of a single cell single CPU
(750MHz) rp8400.
On rp8400 and Superdome A6826A provides outstanding performance with linear scaling up to 4 cards, when
all the eight ports are being used at 2Gb/s bandwidth. Additional cards may be added to provide greater
connectivity. The card delivers excellent performance in limited configurations on rp7400 and rp5450.
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