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

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. Using all four ports on the AB465A works exceptionally well for those

deployments which require more connectivity and less bandwidth per port. Performance

using all four ports concurrently on the AB465A is highly dependent on the unique demands

of applications running on the system. All four ports running at link rate would require

significantly more bandwidth than is available on a single PCIX-133 bus.

Bidirectional Traffic Performance

The AB465A maintained a balance of transmit and receive throughput during bidirectional

(two-way) traffic tests. Results for Bidirectional traffic varied depending on the types of traffic

which are combined. Most applications and system work loads do not generate sustained

bidirectional traffic patterns.

• Bidirectional Ethernet only traffic through a single port achieved an excellent 1.7

gigabits per second on the rx4640. Two ports of bidirectional Ethernet only traffic

achieved 2.46 gigabits per second of throughput.

• Combined disk read and write traffic through a single FC port is excellent -- achieving:

— 352 MB/s on the rx4640 with no Ethernet traffic, and

— greater than 328 MB/s while any type of Ethernet traffic was occurring on a single

active 1000Base-T port.

• Combined disk read and write traffic on two FC ports reaches an amazing 523 MB/s of

throughput.

• Bidirectional Ethernet traffic through a single port while running maximum sustained

concurrent disk traffic varied from 1.2 to 1.6 gigabits per second depending on the type

of disk traffic occurring on a single active FC port. Most importantly the 1000 Base-T

port maintained a balance of transmit and receive throughput even with the added

stress of the disk traffic.

Sustained bidirectional traffic on all 4 ports doubles the bandwidth requirements of the ports

being actively used and pushes the total needed bandwidth closer to or beyond the limits

imposed by PCIX-133 bus and bridge technologies.