In March of 2005, Emulex expanded upon the previous two comparative performance testing efforts that it conducted earlier, in June 2004 and January of 2005, which had revealed significant performance advantages over QLogic’s current PCI-X HBA product offering. To recap, in those tests both of Emulex’s midrange and enterprise class PCI-X HBA products consistently outperformed QLogic’s current enterprise PCI-X HBA product offering by as much as 150% in some cases. In addition, “Mixed I/O Environment” testing (I/O profiles of differing block sizes and destinations are processed on the same HBA port) was conducted that revealed even more pronounced Emulex performance advantages, as is the case when a single HBA port is used concurrently for disk operations while also performing streaming backup. The comparative performance test data from these first tests are presented in reports that can be found on the Emulex website at www.emulex.com.

In this third and latest test series, we investigate the performance characteristics of 1st generation Fibre Channel PCI Express host bus adapters (HBAs) from both Emulex and QLogic. Both companies’ products are generally available currently to serve this new market. The QLogic QLE2360 HBA when announced in March of 2005, was touted by them as being “The Worlds Fastest HBA”. This report takes a look at the performance potential of these two PCI Express HBAs and uncovers that press release performance boasts do not always lead to customer benefits in the real world.