Emulex Gen 7 Fibre Channel HBAs

Product Brief

Fully Protect Data

• Thwart malicious firmware with a

Silicon Root of Trust and digitally

signed firmware.

− Complies with the NIST 800-193

framework.

− Verifies the digital signature

during firmware download and

power-on.

• Guarantee driver security with

Broadcom digitally signed drivers.

• Secure Boot guarantees UEFI boot

code security with digitally signed

boot code.

• Data Integrity Field (T10 DIF)

protects data from corruption.

Simplify HBA

Management and

Remediate Network

Performance Problems

with the new Emulex

SAN Manager (ESM)3

Emulex Gen 7 HBAs work with the

Emulex SAN Manager application

to reduce operational cost and

complexity via the following:

Visibility into the endpoints of the

fabric:

• Captures complete SAN HBA host

inventory; host names; and OS,

software, and firmware versions.

• Identifies multipath misconfiguration

errors via the multipath validation

tool.

Centralized in-band access to

managed HBAs across the SAN:

• Configures the Adaptive Congestion

Management feature.

• Enables optical transceiver statistics

to be downloaded for analysis to

help detect optic degradation; lists

queue depths by port.

Automatic identification and

mitigation of application

performance problems with direct

communication between Emulex

HBAs and Brocade fabric switches

and directors:

• Visualizes SAN congestion with a

dashboard that presents congestion

and bandwidth graphs.

• Remediates congestion

automatically via the Adaptive

Congestion Management feature.

enhancement results in significant

increased performance compared

to legacy software-based solutions.

These performance advances

enable Emulex Gen 7 HBAs to

handle demanding workloads and

I/O spikes experienced under peak

workload conditions like no other

Fibre Channel HBA in the industry.

Emulex Gen 7 HBAs support NVMe

over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC),

providing significantly lower latency

versus the traditional Fibre Channel

SCSI protocol (SCSI FCP). Testing

by independent performance

labs has shown that NVMe/FC

can deliver up to 50% more IOPS,

30% lower latency,4 and up to 3.4x

higher online transaction processing

(OLTP) transactions per minute5

than traditional SCSI FCP. Emulex

Gen 7 HBAs also support NVMe/

FC and SCSI FCP concurrently,

providing investment protection and

allowing data centers to transition to

end-to-end NVMe over FC SANs at

their own pace.

Emulex Gen 7 HBA port

aggregation (also known as

trunking) provides a method to

aggregate physical ports to form

a single logical port. Aggregating

physical ports to make a single

high-bandwidth datapath increases

the logical connection bandwidth

for applications that need it, such

as data warehousing and virtual

machine migration.

Operational Efficiency

Emulex Gen 7 HBAs offer

enhanced reliability, availability,

and serviceability (RAS) including

port isolation and port-based error

isolation that enables users to easily

detect, isolate, and recover from

errors.

Emulex Gen 7 HBAs are managed

HBAs—intelligent adapters

designed to work with Emulex SAN

Manager3 to reduce the complexity

of managing enterprise-class SANs.

Unlike other adapters, managed

HBAs are designed to perform

many operational tasks without the

intervention of the host on which

they reside. Managed HBAs differ

from other adapters because they:

• Communicate to the Emulex SAN

Manager application and register

as a managed HBA.

• Utilize the industry-standard

INCITS/T11 specification, which

includes full FPINs and signaling

support to collaborate with the

fabric to identify and address

performance problems.

• Monitor and record performance

data and fabric notifications for

analysis.

Emulex Gen 7 HBAs are easy to

manage and save administrators

time and operating costs with

features such as no reboots for

firmware updates, queue depth

changes, or optics replacements.

Emulex Gen 7 hot-plug (hot-

swappable) optics enable optics to

be removed and replaced without

shutting down the system, allowing

for uninterrupted service.

The Emulex HBA Manager

application, formerly known as

Emulex OneCommand™ Manager,

provides centralized management

of current and previous generations

of Emulex FC HBAs. Emulex HBA

troubleshooting is simplified with

Emulex HBA Capture, an Emulex

utility that gathers system, adapter,

and device driver information.

Data collected by HBA Capture

is compressed into a single file

and can be sent to Broadcom

Technical Support for analysis when

debugging system issues or for

diagnostic purposes.

Emulex HBAs fully support the

Brocade® Fabric Vision® suite of

features, facilitating a solution from

the switch to the server endpoints

that have Emulex HBAs installed.

Supported features include

ClearLink™ (D_Port), Link Cable

Beaconing, Host Name Registration,

Read Diagnostic Parameters,

VMID, BB_Credit Recovery,

3

The Emulex SAN Manager application is available separately. Contact Broadcom sales for information.

4

Emulex labs/Demartek, 2018

5

Tolly Test Report # 220122, 2020