QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel Adapter of Choice in Microsoft Hyper-V Environments - Manual (Page 2)

hSG-WP09004 PX2832003-00 rev. B 05/12 2
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Microsoft Micro-Benchmark and Hyper-V Scalability
Configuration
the iOmeter tool benchmarked the QLogic 2500 Series adapter versus the
emulex LightPulse LPe12002 8Gb adapter in an exchange environment
with minimum subsystem latency.
the iOmeter test setup (see Figure 1) consisted of the latest 8Gb adapters
from QLogic and emulex, running on current commercially available drivers,
installed in a intel
® tylersburg quad core (dual socket) server running
Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) with the hyper-V OS. the tylersburg server
was connected to a texas Memory System ramSan
® -400 through a QLogic
5802V 8Gb Switch to test sequential operation. ramSan-320 was added as
part of the configuration to test scalability. Using a solid state disk allowed
removing the latency introduced by a slower disk-drive, emulated a real
world data-center configuration, and provided the performance benchmark
expected from next-generation storage arrays.
as part of the sequential operation benchmark, one initiator and four
target ramSan ports (with eight LUNs) were configured in a zone to the
QLogic 5802V 8Gb Switch. For the scalability benchmark, eight LUNs (four
LUNs per ramSan, one LUN per hyper-V VM) were configured. tests were
performed to compare i/O performance of the QLogic and emulex 8Gb Fibre
Channel adapters in a Microsoft Windows hyper-V virtualized environment
with Windows Server 2008 as a guest OS. iOmeter measured the iOPS and
throughput values across a range of block sizes.
all measurements were made with out-of-the-box settings for the adapters
from both companies, using the latest commercially available hardware
and software.
Figure 1. IOmeter Test Setup
test Procedure
the tests were executed on the configuration shown in Figure 1 as follows:
1. a QLogic 8Gb single-channel PCi express ® to Fibre Channel adapter
(QLe2562) was installed on the test server using the Windows Server
2008 (64-bit) driver.
2. Workloads were created separately across a range of block sizes. eight
LUNs were created and mapped to four target ports.
3. tests were run for one minute on this setup.
4. these steps were repeated for the emulex 8Gb LPe12002 PCi express
to Fibre Channel adapter (LPe12002).
Server consolidation through virtualization of the enterprise data center
improves server/processor utilization and lowers data center capital
and operational cost. it administrators must ensure that none of the
subsystems become a bottleneck for successful deployment of a
virtualized and consolidated data center. the evolution of consolidated
server deployments and the move to 8Gb Fibre Channel infrastructure
requires higher scalability in server connectivity to storage. to meet the
ever-growing demands of consolidated and virtualized environments,
enterprise it administrators must deploy a scalable, high-performance
adapter architecture that can address the demands placed by multiple virtual machines (VMs) or guest operating systems (OSs), as well as
applications, in virtualized environments running simultaneously on a
single physical server.
enterprise data centers are adopting server virtualization technologies
to optimize and streamline the deployment of their enterprise
applications. For those deploying a Windows environment, Microsoft
Windows Server
® 2008 provides virtualization technology out-of-the-
box with hyper-V ™ .
Executive Summary