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Just released for the IBM System x servers, the QLogic 2500 Series host bus adapters (HBAs) are different than other 8Gb HBAs due to their Dynamic Power Management and Cool HBA™ technologies -- two breakthrough innovations developed under the QLogic StarPower™ Green Initiative.

The QLogic 2500 includes the QLE2560 single-port (IBM #42D0501) and QLE2562 dual-port (IBM #42D0510) 8Gb HBA running at 5 GHz over a PCI Express bus. QLogic builds all its products with 4 key goals in mind - Efficiency, High Performance, Superior Scalability and Enhanced Reliability. The 2500 Series achieves these goals with the following:

• Dynamic Power Management gives the QLogic 2500 the ability to sense the type of PCI Express bus that is present and consume only the amount of power necessary to run at full speed. Dynamic power management techniques also include Intelligent Link Training (ILT), which can save up to 400mW of power per 8Gb FC HBA in the data center.
  
• By minimizing power consumption, we reduce the amount of heat generated and the need for additional airflow fans and/or a heat sink to remove heat. With the QLogic Cool HBA Technology, the 2500 Series HBAs can operate up to 55° C without any airflow, unlike competitive products, which require fans in order to cool.

• 1600 MBps (full duplex) and 200,000 initiator and target IOPS resulting in high Fibre Channel I/O transfer rates for your storage applications
  
• Intelligent interleaved DMA (iiDMA) ensures maximum bandwidth utilization between end nodes that have different link rates. Why is this important? In a mixed HBA environment of 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb faster links can be serviced without scaling down to the performance of the slowest target.
  
• Out-of-Order Frame Reassembly (OoOFR) reassembles the frames within an exchange in the correct order, even though they may have been received out of order. Why is this important? Reassembling frames in the correct sequence improves performance by eliminating the need to retransmit the entire I/O block.
  
• CPU off-load for TCP/IP checksum calculation and jumbo frame support (9 KB) reduces CPU utilization and increases Ethernet throughput.

• Multi-ID and N_Port virtualization "ready", allows an HBA to present virtual worldwide port names on a single physical port. Now, hosts with multiple virtual servers can access the fabric as if there were dedicated HBAs attached to each virtual machine.
  
• Virtual fabric (VSAN) "ready", allows physical FC ports to be part of multiple logical networks.
  
• Comprehensive Operating System (OS) driver support including Windows®, Linux®, Solaris™, and VMware®. A single FC driver strategy per OS allows storage administrators to easily deploy and manage HBAs in heterogeneous SAN configurations.

• Overlapping Protection Domain is a unique way within the FC controller ASIC to offer the highest level of data protection. QLogic's FC ASIC's implementation ensures that data is not left unprotected even for the smallest fraction of time.

For more information on the QLogic 2500

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