Gigabit Ethernet Cards

Recommended Use Based on Performance and Design

The AD194A can be thought of as a combination of an HP AB379B 2-port 4Gbps Fibre

Channel card connected by a PCI-X to PCI-X bridge with an A7012A 2-port 1000Base-T

card and sharing a common PCI-X bus. All the connections sharing this single common

resource perform exceptionally well in a variety of configurations.

HP recommends the following usage model to achieve the best performance:

• Run the AD194A cards in the highest performing PCI-X 133 MHz slots. Slots 3, 4, 5 and

6 are the recommended high performance PCI-X 133 MHz slots in the HP Integrity

rx6600 used in our performance testing.

• Set up a pair of cards for high availability as shown in Figure 2. On the first card,

configure 1 Fibre Channel port and 1 Gigabit Ethernet port as primary or active and

the second Fibre Channel port and Gigabit Ethernet port as alternates for the second

card. On the second card, configure 1 Fibre Channel port and 1 Gigabit Ethernet port

as primary or active and the second Fibre Channel port and Gigabit Ethernet port as

alternates for the first card. This setup would provide the best performance and high

availability. Achieving a similar level of high availability would require using twice the

number of AB379B (2-port 4Gbps Fibre Channel) or A7012A (2-port GigE) cards.

Figure 2 Setting Up a Pair of Cards for High Availability

The recommendations mentioned here were followed to achieve the results shown in this

article. Card throughput will be affected with configurations other than those recommended.

Besides providing exceptional performance, the AD194A and AD193A provide increased

connectivity compared to other HP cards such as the AB379B, A7012A, AB465A and

A9784A. Please contact an HP representative for additional help in understanding how to

best deploy the AD194A and AD193A multi-function cards.

When used as recommended, the AD194A and AD193A provide equivalent performance

to the ports on the AB379B and A7012A cards. In addition, the AD194A provides the

benefit of high availability (HA) with no additional slot usage. In HA situations, when all

four ports are being used, performance may be limited due to the bandwidth limitations of

the PCI bus.