Abstract
The Emulex 16 Gb Generation 6 Fibre Channel (FC) host bus adapters (HBAs) are an ideal solution when requiring high-speed data transfer in storage connectivity for virtualized environments, data backup, and mission-critical applications.
This product guide describes the Emulex HBAs and provides essential pre-sales information to understand the products, their key features and specifications, and compatibility. This guide is intended for technical specialists, sales specialists, sales engineers, and IT architects who want to learn more about the adapters and consider their use in IT solutions.
Change History
Changes in the November 28 update:
Learn about the key features of the Emulex adapters
VIDEO
Introduction
The Emulex 16 Gb (Generation 6) Fibre Channel (FC) host bus adapters (HBAs) are an ideal solution when requiring high-speed data transfer in storage connectivity for virtualized environments, data backup, and mission-critical applications. They are designed to meet the needs of modern networked storage systems that utilize high performance and low latency solid state storage drives for caching and persistent storage as well as hard disk drive arrays.
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs feature ExpressLane, which prioritizes mission-critical traffic in congested networks ensuring maximum application performance on flash storage arrays. They also seamlessly support Brocade ClearLink diagnostics through Emulex OneCommand Manager, ensuring the reliability and management of storage network when connected to Brocade Gen 5 FC SAN fabrics.
Did you know?
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs have an advanced ASIC which can achieve 1.6M IOPS on a single port by using Emulex's Dynamic Multicore architecture, which dynamically scales HBA resources to any port that needs it. This is essential when ports are used in active-standby mode.
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs can provide near limitless scalability to support maximum VM density, with 2x more on-chip resources and bandwidth. These low latency HBAs can also improve your VDI experience, providing noticeable improvements during boot storms, and allow faster data warehousing and meet the massive bandwidth requirements of flash storage arrays.
Fiber optic cables
The following table lists the fiber optic cables that are available from Lenovo.
Key features
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs have the following features:
Maximum performance with up to 1.6 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) to support larger server virtualization deployments and scalable cloud initiatives, and performance to match new multicore processors, SSDs/flash storage, and faster server host bus architectures.
Supports Brocade Clearlink diagnostics, which helps ensure optical and signal integrity for Fibre Channel cables and optics by validating the health, reliability and performance of the network prior to, and after, deployment. Allows the IT administrator to detect faulty cables and optics in minutes versus hours. Brocade ClearLink is also seamlessly integrated into Emulex OneCommand.
Offer end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) application prioritization with ExpressLane technology, which allows customers to prioritize faster storage traffic (such as SSDs) ahead of slower traffic (such as spinning hard drives), alleviating potential bottlenecks from slow storage.
Frame-level multiplexing and out-of-order frame reassembly increases link efficiency and maximizes HBA performance.
vScale performance and scalability: Multicore ASIC engine with eight cores supports 255 VFs, 1024 MSI-X, and 16127 logins/open exchanges for maximum VM density.
The Emulex OneCommand Manager enterprise class management application features a multiprotocol and cross-platform architecture that provides centralized management of all Emulex HBAs. VMware vCenter plug-in provides OneCommand support within a VMware environment.
GreenState power efficiency reduces data center power consumption and associated operational expenses by delivering exceptional power to port ratios.
End-to-end data protection with hardware parity, CRC, ECC, and other advanced error checking and correcting algorithms, which ensures that data is safe from corruption.
Support forward error correction (FEC), a new Gen 6 standard feature that provides enhanced data reliability and performance by automatically detecting and recovering from bit errors.
T10-PI data integrity with high performance offload provides end-to-end data corruption protection.
Rock-solid reliability and thermal characteristics, which are essential for mission-critical, cloud, and virtualized applications.
Emulex HBAs are renowned for reliability, ensuring maximum SAN uptime. Their "it just works” reputation is based on 17 million installed ports with proven industry-leading reliability of 10 million hours field Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).
Support for Message Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) improves host utilization and enhances application performance.
Support for 16 Gb, 8 Gb, and 4 Gb FC devices.
Comprehensive virtualization capabilities with support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV).
A common driver model allows a single driver to support all Emulex HBAs on a given OS.
Reduces the number of cards, cables, and PCIe slots required.
Exceptional performance per watt and price/performance ratios.
Integrates seamlessly into existing SANs.
Allows application of SAN best practices, tools, and processes with virtual server deployments.
Ensures data availability and data integrity.
Universal boot capability allows the appropriate boot environment to be automatically selected for any given hardware.
Boot from SAN capability reduces the system management costs and increases uptime.
Detailed and real-time event logging and tracing enables quick diagnosis of SAN problems.
The beaconing feature flashes the HBA LEDs, simplifying their identification within server racks.
The environmental monitoring feature helps optimize SAN availability.
The following table compares features of Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6, 16 Gb (Gen 5), and 8 Gb FC HBAs.
Table 3. Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6, 16 Gb (Gen 5), and 8 Gb FC HBAs feature comparison
Feature
16 Gb FC Gen 6
16 Gb FC (Gen 5)
8 Gb FC
Part numbers
01CV830
81Y1655
42D0485
Host interface
PCIe 3.0 x8
PCIe 3.0 x8
PCIe 2.0 x8
IOPS performance
1.6 M IOPS
1.2 M IOPS
0.2 M IOPS (per port)
16 Gb FC SFP+ transceiver support
Yes
Yes
No
8 Gb FC SFP+ transceiver support
No
Yes
Yes
16 Gbps speed support
Yes
Yes
No
8 Gbps speed support
Yes
Yes
Yes
4 Gbps speed support
Yes
Yes
Yes
ClearLink support
Yes
Yes
No
ExpressLane support
Yes
Yes
No
Logins and Exchanges
16,127
8,192
4,096
SR-IOV support
255 VFs
255 VFs
No
Important: Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs offer better performance and scalability with lower power consumption, while fitting into the same price band, compared to Emulex 16 Gb (Gen 5) FC HBAs.
Technical specifications
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs have the following specifications:
Based on the LPe31000 (single port) and LPe31002 (dual port) adapters
I/O controller: Emulex Engine 501 (XE501) I/O Controller (IOC)
Host interface: PCIe 3.0 x8
Ports: Single-port and dual-port SFP+ based adapters
Link speed: Support for 16 Gb, 8 Gb and 4 Gb FC link speeds, which are automatically negotiated
Data rate: 14.025 Gbps (1600 MBps), 8.5 Gbps (800 MBps), and 4.25 Gbps (400 MBps) autosensing (per port), with full duplex
Performance: Up to 1,600,000 IOPS
Industry standards:
Current ANSI/IETF standards: FC-PI-4, FC-PI-5, FC-PI-6 , FC-FS-3, FC-LS-2, FC-GS-6, FC-DA, FC-DA2, FCP-4, SPC-4, SBC-3, and SSC-4
Legacy ANSI/IETF standards: FC-PH, FC-PH-2, FC-PH-3, FC-PI, FC-PI-2, FC-PI-3, FC-FS, FC-GS-2/3/4/5, FCP-2/3, FC-HBA, FC-TAPE, FC-MI, SPC-3, SBC-2, SSC-2, and SSC-3
Topology: Point-to-point and switched fabric
Hot-pluggable 16 Gbps Fibre Channel SFP+ short wave optical transceivers (850 nm) with LC connectors (included with the adapters). Note: Other transceivers are not supported.
Distance support:
Operating at 16 Gbps:
Operating at 8 Gbps:
Operating at 4 Gbps:
Up to 70 m on 62.5/125 µm OM1 MMF
Up to 150 m on 50/125 µm OM2 MMF
Management software:
Emulex AutoPilot Installer automates the HBA installation process and reduces time to deployment and administrative costs. Automated installation and configuration of driver and management tools simplifies deployment of multiple adapters within Windows environments. A single installation of driver and management application eliminates multiple reboots and ensures that each component is installed correctly and the HBA is ready to use.
The Emulex OneCommand Manager application enables centralized discovery, monitoring, reporting, and administration of Emulex HBAs and CNAs on local and remote hosts. Powerful automation capabilities facilitate remote driver parameter, firmware, and boot code upgrades. In addition to the GUI interface, management functions can also be performed through a scriptable command-line interface (CLI) and a web browser.
Emulex management instrumentation complies with Open Management Standards, such as SMI-S and common HBA API support, which enables seamless upward integration into enterprise storage and server management solutions.
Server support - ThinkSystem
The following table lists the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.
Server support - System x
The following tables list the System x servers that are compatible.
Support for System x and dense servers with Xeon E5/E7 v4 and E3 v5 processors
Support for System x and dense servers with Intel Xeon v3 processors
Operating systems
The adapters support the following operating systems:
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server x64 Edition
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 for AMD64/EM64T
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 with Xen for AMD64/EM64T
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 with XEN
VMware vSphere 5.5
VMware vSphere 6.0
VMware vSphere 6.5
Warranty
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs carry a one-year limited warranty. When installed in a supported server, the adapters assume the servers’s base warranty and any Lenovo Services warranty upgrade.
Physical specifications
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs have the following dimensions (approximate):
Short, low profile MD2 form factor card
168 mm x 69 mm (6.60 in. x 2.7 in.)
Standard (3U) and low-profile (2U) brackets included
Operating environment
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs are supported in the following environment:
Temperature:
Operating: 0 - 55 °C (32 - 131 °F)
Storage: -20 - 85 °C (-4 - 185 °F)
Relative humidity: 5 - 95% (non-condensing)
Agency approvals
The Emulex 16 Gb Gen 6 FC HBAs conform to the following regulations:
AS/NZS CISPR22:2009+A1, Class A
Australian EMC Framework (RCM)
China RoHS compliant
cUR recognized to CSA 22.2, No. 60950-1-07
EN55022:2010, Class A
EN55024:2010
EN55032:2012
EU (CE Mark)
FCC Rules, Part 15, Class A
Industry Canada, ICES-003, Class A
Japan VCCI, Class A
Korea MSIP, Class A
RoHS Compliant (Directive 2011/65/EU)
TUV certified to EN60950-1+A11+A1+A12+A2
Taiwan BSMI, Class A
UL recognized to UL60950-1 2nd Edition
