Performance and Recommended Use of AB290A Combination 2-Port U320 SCSI / 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards

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Table Of Contents

June 2005

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................... 3

Recommended Use Based on Performance and Design ........................................ 3

Performance Summary .................................................................................... 5

Gigabit Ethernet Only Performance ................................................................... 6

U320 SCSI Only Performance .......................................................................... 7

1 SCSI and 1 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance ........................................ 8

2 SCSI Ports and 2 GbE Ports Combined Traffic Performance ................................ 9

Bidirectional Traffic Performance ....................................................................... 9

How We Measured GbE and U320 SCSI Efficiency .......................................... 10

Features and Benefits of the AB290A .............................................................. 12

For More Information .................................................................................... 12

Legal Notices ............................................................................................... 13

Performance and Recommended Use of

AB290A Combination

2-Port U320 SCSI / 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards

From Results on an HP rx4640 Server

Summary of content (14 pages)

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Performance and Recommended Use of AB290A Combination 2-Port U320 SCSI / 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards From Results on an HP rx4640 Server June 2005 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................... 3 Recommended Use Based on Performance and Design ........................................ 3 Performance Summary ....................................................................................
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Introduction Introduction This article highlights the excellent performance and high availability of HP’s new AB290A multi-function card (Figure 1) that combines 2-ports for U320 SCSI mass storage and 2 ports for Gigabit Ethernet networking. This article also provides suggestions based on the performance and technology that will help you to best meet your business needs.
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Recommended Use Based on Performance and Design • Schedule workloads for ports: All 4 ports can be cabled and connected. Schedule or prioritize applications so that 2 ports are running full traffic at any given time or all 4 ports are running traffic at reduced rates. The 2 ports selected can be both ports of a single technology or 1 port from each of the 2 technologies on the card. This provides the best possible per port data rates. • Set up a pair of cards for high availability as shown in Figure 2.
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Performance Summary Performance Summary The AB290A card provides excellent performance when used in accordance with the recommendations in this paper. Figure 3 summarizes the performance results possible when many different types of traffic combinations are used with the recommended models. AB290A Performance Summary in rx4640 Figure 3 Average Percentage of Unidirectional Throughput Compared to Dual Port Cards 100.0% 99.8% 96.3% 90.0% 90.9% 80.0% 73.5% 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.
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Gigabit Ethernet Only Performance Gigabit Ethernet Only Performance Figure 4 shows the performance results of the Gigabit Ethernet ports when unidirectional Gigabit Ethernet traffic using a standard 1500-byte MTU is being run through the card.
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U320 SCSI Only Performance U320 SCSI Only Performance Figure 5 shows the performance results for the U320 SCSI ports when unidirectional disk traffic is being run through the card.
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1 SCSI and 1 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance 1 SCSI and 1 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance Figure 6 shows the performance results when a combination of unidirectional traffic is run simultaneously through one U320 SCSI port and one 1000Base-T port on the AB290A card.
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2 SCSI Ports and 2 GbE Ports Combined Traffic Performance 2 SCSI Ports and 2 GbE Ports Combined Traffic Performance Using both U320 SCSI ports and both 1000Base-T ports on the AB290A card simultaneously works very well for applications such as web servers or file servers. The amount of networking traffic performed by this type of application regulates or controls the amount of disk traffic.
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How We Measured GbE and U320 SCSI Efficiency How We Measured GbE and U320 SCSI Efficiency This article highlights the AB290A throughput. Throughput is the data transfer rate, or data rate -- the amount of time it takes data to move from one place to another. In this article, it’s shown for one-way signals as well as 2-way. Throughput measures how well programs run with a certain workload and how quickly user requests can be handled.
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How We Measured GbE and U320 SCSI Efficiency Table 1 Products Used in the Performance Measurement Tests (Continued) Clients generating the test load for Gigabit Ethernet Four rx2600 servers • Two, 1.5 GHz Intel Itanium2 CPUs each • HP-UX 11i version 2 (B.11.23.0303.4) • One A7012A PCI-X 1000Base-T card per rx2600 • LAN Driver version – IEther-00 B.11.23.05 MSA30 SB U320 SCSI Disk Systems Four U320 SCSI disk systems with a mix of drives for U320 SCSI tests.
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Features and Benefits of the AB290A Features and Benefits of the AB290A Features and benefits of the AB290A include: • The Gigabit Ethernet ports support virtual LANs (VLANs). A Virtual LAN (VLAN) is a logical or virtual network segment that can span multiple physical network segments. VLANs isolate broadcast and multicast traffic by determining which destinations should receive that traffic, thereby making better use of switch and end-station resources.
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Legal Notices Legal Notices © 2005 Hewlett-Packard Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
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Legal Notices 14