Performance and Recommended Use of AB465A Combination 2-Port 2-Gb Fibre Channel / 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards

ManualsBrandsHP ManualsNetwork HardwareHP PCI-X 266MHz 10Gb Ethernet SR Multi-OS Card

May 2005

Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

Fibre Channel Only Performance ...................................................................... 7

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

2 FC Port and 2 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance ..................................... 9

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

How We Measured GbE and Fibre Channel Efficiency ...................................... 10

Features and Benefits of the AB465A .............................................................. 12

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

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

Performance and Recommended Use of

AB465A Combination

2-Port 2-Gb Fibre Channel / 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 AB465A Combination 2-Port 2-Gb Fibre Channel / 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards From Results on an HP rx4640 Server May 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 AB465A multi-function card (Figure 1) that combines 2-ports for 2-Gbps Fibre Channel 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 achieve 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 AB465A 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.
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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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Fibre Channel Only Performance Fibre Channel Only Performance Figure 5 shows the performance results for the 2Gb Fibre Channel ports when unidirectional disk traffic is being run through the card. The following highlights show the excellent performance achieved during Fibre Channel traffic testing: Figure 5 AB465A Fibre Channel Throughput in rx4640 • Disk write traffic achieved greater than 92% of link rate on the rx4640 with one port achieving 186 MB/s and two ports reaching 370 MB/s.
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1 FC Port and 1 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance 1 FC Port and 1 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance Figure 6 shows the performance results when a mix of unidirectional traffic is run simultaneously through one 2Gb Fibre Channel port and one 1000Base-T port on the AB465A card.
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2 FC Port and 2 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance 2 FC Port and 2 GbE Port Combined Traffic Performance Using both 2Gb Fibre Channel ports and both 1000Base-T ports on the AB465A 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 Fibre Channel Efficiency How We Measured GbE and Fibre Channel Efficiency This article highlights the AB465A 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 Fibre Channel 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 HP StorageWorks DS2405 Fibre Channel Disk Systems Four DS2405 2Gb/s FC disk systems with a mix of drives for Fibre Channel tests.
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Features and Benefits of the AB465A Features and Benefits of the AB465A Features and benefits of the AB465A 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