Emulex PCI-X HBA Selected as Connectivity Solution for HP Itanium 2-Based Servers; Emulex LP982 PCI-X HBA Provides Superior Connectivity Solution for HP Server Environments

Business Wire, Nov 19, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2002

Emulex Corp. (NYSE:ELX), the world's leading supplier of storage networking host bus adapters (HBAs), today announced that it has been selected by HP to provide its LightPulse 2Gb/s LP982 Fibre Channel PCI-X HBA for integration into the HP Server rx5670 featuring the Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processor in both Linux and Windows environments.

The Emulex LP982 PCI-X HBA and its unique architecture are designed to ensure investment protection and simplify storage area network (SAN) management.

"Our relationship with HP has resulted in a variety of both hardware and software development initiatives, enabling HP to deliver powerful and high availability storage networking capabilities," said Kirk Roller, Emulex president and chief operating officer. "Emulex's sophisticated HBA architecture continues to offer customers best-in-class features, and we are confident that HP customers will benefit from our development efforts."

"HP customers demand integrated server and storage solutions that offer leading performance, reliability and scalability," said Bill Mottram, director, infrastructure solutions, HP Network Storage Solutions. "The integration of Emulex HBAs allows HP Itanium 2-based servers to interact seamlessly with our leading storage solutions, including HP StorageWorks SANs, in the most demanding enterprise environments."

The Emulex LP982 offers features ideal for the mid-range storage area network market, and delivers 30 percent more I/O processing power than the previous generation. The Emulex LP982 HBAs are capable of sustaining more than 390 MB/s on a single 2 Gb/s link, which ensures a high performance Fibre Channel connectivity solution available to both the enterprise and mid-range market segments.

Furthermore, the Emulex PCI-X HBAs are backwards compatible with existing 1 Gb/s and 2 Gb/s Fibre Channel PCI installations. Emulex HBAs also feature a unique architecture that enables a single operating system driver to be used across its entire product line, which helps to simplify SAN management. In addition, Emulex HBAs offer a firmware upgradeable architecture that protects customers' investments in storage networking solutions, by enabling a simplified upgrade path without requiring hardware replacement.

The HP rx5670 server features Intel Itanium 2 processors and up to 48 GB of memory, providing increased performance and a more efficiently managed server system. HP's extensive Itanium 2-based systems offer significant system performance gains through the development of the scalable HP Chipset zx1. With the chipset, HP Itanium 2-based servers achieve industry leading performance and memory expandability.

The Emulex Family of Host Bus Adapters

The Emulex family of HBAs offers high performance, standards-based connectivity solutions for both Fibre Channel and Internet protocol (IP) storage networking environments. Emulex host bus adapters provide a unique combination of features required for mission-critical enterprise environments that deliver reliability, high bandwidth, server CPU offload, low latency and scalable connectivity.

Emulex HBAs also offer a unique driver architecture that enables compatibility of a single operating system driver across Emulex's entire product line and a firmware-based architecture. These features help to lower the customer's total cost of ownership and reduce management complexity, while enabling a seamless migration path to next-generation technologies.

For information about how Emulex HBAs increase SAN productivity and efficiency, visit the Emulex Web site and download the IDC whitepaper titled, "Measuring the HBA's Role in SAN Management." Additional information about the role Emulex HBAs play in simplifying SAN management is available by downloading Emulex's whitepaper titled, "HBAnyware(TM) -- A Centralized HBA Management Suite." Emulex's HBAnyware whitepaper describes the benefits of its driver-based technology that enables complete management of Emulex HBAs, including the ability to upgrade firmware anywhere in a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN from a single console.

Emulex LightPulse family of Fibre Channel HBAs offers full fabric support, high data integrity, full-duplex operation, data buffering for up to 100km of cabling and support for all Fibre Channel topologies. The Emulex LightPulse family of Fibre Channel products includes the 2Gb/s LP9802 and LP982 PCI-X HBAs, the LP9002L and LP952L PCI HBAs, the LP9002C CompactPCI HBA, the LP9002S SBus-based HBA and the market-leading LP8000.

The Emulex family of IP-based storage networking host bus adapters includes the GN9000/SI iSCSI host bus adapter and the GN9000/VI VI/IP host bus adapter. The Emulex GN9000/SI is designed to provide the high performance iSCSI connectivity over gigabit Ethernet for PCI-based systems. The Emulex GN9000/VI VI/IP HBA enables network attached storage (NAS) appliances and hosts to exchange file system data over IP networks, while gaining the high throughput, low latency and reduced CPU overhead benefits of the virtual interface (VI) architecture. For more information on the Emulex product families, visit www.emulex.com.