ADPT/Agilent...
Adaptec 9210LP
The Adaptec 9210LP is noteworthy in that Adaptec partnered with Agilent Technologies for this card, which even has Adaptec/Agilent Technologies silk-screened on the top. The 9210LP uses Agilent's new Tachyon XL2 chipset and is the smallest card in the review. The 9210LP also comes with interchangeable faceplates for installation in servers that require MD2 form factor or standard card slots, and Adaptec's boot-time BIOS screen can be accessed in the same manner as its omnipresent SCSI cards: ctrl-A when prompted.
We had some issues with the 9210LP, however. In our first round of testing it scored only 101.49 MB per second on the maximum throughput test. Puzzled, we rechecked our switch configuration. Everything was set at the full 2 Gb (200 MB) per second rate. The 9210LP was logging into the switch as a 2-Gbps device. We called Adaptec tech support to see what the problem was, and it turns out that the current versions of Adaptec's drivers are having difficulty reading a registry key to set the adapter to N_port mode. Adaptec provided us with a fix, which forced the card into N_port mode operation for reliable performance measurement. Running the card under N_port, we were able to achieve 195.30 MB per second, a considerable increase and what we would expect. The updated driver will be available on Adaptec's Web site by the time you read this, according to company officials.
In the other tests, the Adaptec 9210LP came up short -- extremely so in some cases. The results in our two real-world simulation tests -- database server and Web server -- were particularly dismal. In these tests the 9210LP moved far less data than did the other cards and at a slower rate.
There are also a couple of other issues with this card. First, it lacks the ability to boot through a fabric network. This is a serious shortcoming, as all the other HBAs in this review have that ability. Another thing we noticed was that there is a feature in the 9210LP's BIOS to scan the devices connected to the HBA and show them on screen, similar to what the company's SCSI HBAs do. This feature does not work when connected to a switch. It works only in arbitrated loop mode. Not a huge problem, but when we were first hooking this HBA up, we assumed that this feature worked and that we had a connection problem to the JBODs. If this feature worked it would give all kinds of information on the devices connected to the HBA, such as device number, ALPA and Fibre Channel World Wide Name.
The BIOS settings on this card are also particularly sparse. The only settings we could change were the boot BIOS support, Fibre Channel hard ALPA, device scanning order and host adapter speed. While we don't like to monkey with base settings if we can avoid it, we do like to be given the option. Although we think this will be a good card after Adaptec and Agilent work out the bugs with performance and add all the features that the other cards offer, we cannot recommend it in its current incarnation. When asked, Adaptec was vague on when an updated version will be released. .....
Fibre Channel HBAs
No one wants to be the first to adopt new software or a new technology. "Let someone else find the bugs," we say. Sometimes, though, a bleeding-edge technology is too tempting to ignore. That's how we felt about the new crop of 2-Gb Fibre Channel HBAs (host bus adapters), which promise to double the speed of Fibre Channel connections. So we set out to test HBAs from Adaptec, Atto Technology, Emulex Corp. and QLogic Corp. at our Green Bay, Wis., Real-World Labs®. Considering the morass of Fibre Channel standards documents and the sketchy nature of vendor interoperability, we expected some rough going, and we weren't disappointed. In the end, this lack of interoperability forced us to look at Emulex's HBA individually (see "Emulex Earns Extra Credits"). Among the three cards left in our comparative review, QLogic's QLA2300F took our Editor's Choice award thanks to its ease of setup, error-free operation and superior performance numbers. In the end, we were glad we'd stuck with our tests, despite the pain. But next time we may just let someone else take the hits first. ... Nah.
They kept EMLX by itself because....
After resolving a problem that at first appeared to be a performance issue, we found we really like Emulex Corp.'s LP9002L-F2. Because of this glitch, however, we could not include the Emulex HBA in our comparative review.
So what kept the Emulex card out of the review? In a nutshell, the LP9002L-F2 has quite a few more Fibre Channel buffer credits than the other devices we tested. Buffer credits work like this: The sender keeps track of how many buffer credits (which translates into frames) the receiver has. When the sender has sent the full quota of frames, the receiver sends an authorization code, starting the cycle over. The LP9002L-F2 has a huge amount of buffer credits -- 64 -- while most other HBAs have four. However, our Vixel switch, used to send data to the other HBAs, did not acknowledge that the LP9002L-F2 has 64 buffer credits and filled just four of them, then stopped. The LP9002L-F2, having not received its quota of buffer credits, would not send the authorization for more data until the time-out period had expired, then the cycle would start again. This caused an approximately 16-MB-per-second performance gap between the LP9002L-F2 and the other HBAs we tested. We brought this problem to the attention of Emulex engineers, who re-created the test in the company's labs and confirmed that the problem lay with the buffer credits and the Vixel switch. Emulex and Vixel have worked together on a fix, and Vixel will have released a patch by the time you read this. Once we figured out the problem, we hooked up the QLogic SANbox 2 switch and ran the maximum throughput test. The performance of the LP9002L-F2 was in line with the other switches in the test (see "Performance Test Results" and "Emulex Performance," at right).
Emulex Performance
Click here to enlarge
The LP9002L-F2 was easy to set up, and the BIOS has quite a few features for the advanced Fibre Channel user. The interface, though a bit clumsy, was very serviceable, letting us configure any number of LP9002L-F2s, making multiple adapter configurations easy. The included software, lputilnt, simplifies such tasks as updating the adapter BIOS, and the unit does not require the use of an MS-DOS boot disk, as the other HBAs tested do. Another nice thing about the lputilnt utility is that it is installed with the driver. You do have to do a bit of searching, but once you have it, the utility is worthwhile, offering a wealth of information about adapter firmware revision levels, driver revision levels, PCI registers, statistics and counters, and other information that makes the storage geek's heart flutter. Emulex also offers an MD2 faceplate for low-profile installations, though the LP9002L-F2 box did not come with the MD2 faceplate inside, as Adaptec's did.
Finally, the Emulex unit sports a CD containing documentation for all the company's Fibre Channel HBAs and hubs, as well as a copy of Netscape Navigator 4.08. This documentation is stored in HTML and is easy to navigate and use. In many ways, we prefer this setup to the standard PDF document.
One of the things that really impressed us about the Emulex unit was that it remained competitive with the other cards in all the other tests, despite the buffer-credit issue. Buffer credits become very important as distances increase, and the LP9002L-F2, with its extra buffer credit capacity, is an excellent choice for long-distance applications, even those in excess of 10 kilometers. The LP9002L-F2 is a high quality card with good speed and support.
LP9002L-F2, $1,695. Available: Now. Emulex Corp., (800) 854-7112, (714) 662-5600; fax (714) 513-8270. www.emulex.com
If one of the Qs strengths is not burdening the CPU in FC perhaps they will also do well in iSCSI where folks will be watching this critical parameter? Time will tell. |
