BK3258003-00 Rev. H 03/18 2
QLogic QLE2694 and QLE2694L
Data Sheet
VIRTUALIZATION OPTIMIZED
The QLE2694/QLE2694L Adapters support standards-based virtualization
features. Under VMware
®
ESXi 6.0 and 6.5, I/O requests and responses
can be tagged with the virtual machine-ID (VM-ID) of the appropriate
virtual machine, providing end-to-end visibility at the VM level. Support
for N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) enables a single FC adapter port to
provide multiple virtual ports for increased network scalability. NPIV allows
a single FC adapter port to participate in multiple virtual fabric domains
for improved availability. In addition, the 16GFC line rate per physical port
delivers unmatched storage performance to maximize the number of
virtual machines per physical server.
QLOGIC STORFUSION TECHNOLOGY
QLogic’s Enhanced Gen5FC 16GFC adapters powered by StorFusion
technology, include advanced capabilities that are enabled when deployed
with supported Brocade
®
switches. By implementing these industry-
leading solutions together, SAN administrators can take advantage of
enhanced features that improve availability, accelerate deployment, and
increase network performance.
Improved Total Cost of Ownership and Reliability
StorFusion technology delivers advanced link diagnostics, which
improve availability and support for high performance fabrics. Using the
Diagnostics Port feature with a Brocade
®
switch that supports ClearLink
®
,
administrators can quickly run a battery of automated diagnostic tests to
assess the health of links and fabric components.
The QLE2694/QLE2694L Adapters support link cable beaconing (LCB),
which enables administrators to visually identify both ends of a physical
link. In a large data center with hundreds of ports and cables to manage, a
simple command turns on port LED beacons on both ends of a link cable
connection. Administrators can use LCB to quickly identify connection peer
ports without tracing the cable.
QLogic technology includes the read diagnostic parameters (RDP) feature,
which provides detailed port, media, and optics diagnostics. From any
point in the fabric, an administrator can use RDP to easily discover and
diagnose link-related errors and degrading conditions on any N_Port-
to-F_Port link.
The extensive suite of diagnostic tools maximizes uptime and
performance, allowing organizations to address problems before they
impact operations.
Rapid Server Deployment and Orchestration
StorFusion technology includes fabric pre-provisioning services that
enable servers to be quickly deployed, replaced, and moved across the
SAN. By leveraging fabric-assigned port world wide name (FA-WWN)
and fabric-based boot LUN discovery (F-BLD) capabilities, the creation
of zones, LUNs, and other services can be completed before the servers
arrive on site—eliminating time consuming, manual tasks that typically
delay server deployment.
Performance SLA Enforcement with VM-level Quality of Service
Network performance can be dramatically improved by implementing
the industry-standard class-specic control (CS_CTL)-based frame
prioritization QoS, which helps alleviate network congestion. When QLogic
adapters with StorFusion technology are connected to supported SAN
fabrics, trafc is classied as it arrives at the switch, and is then processed
on the basis of congured priorities. Trafc can be prioritized for delivery
or subjected to limited delivery options. As a result, mission-critical
workloads can be assigned a higher priority than less time-sensitive
network trafc to achieve optimized performance.
Higher Resiliency and Performance with Automatic Error Recovery
Forward error correction (FEC) improves performance and link integrity
to support higher end-to-end data rates by automatically recovering
from many transmission errors without re-sending the frames. FEC
automatically detects and recovers from bit errors, which results in higher
availability and performance.
Automatic buffer-to-buffer credit recovery (BB-CR) helps overcome
performance degradation, congestion, and link resets caused by buffer
credit loss, especially on longer distance and high-loss ber connections.
SIMPLIFIED MANAGEMENT
QLogic’s unied management application, QConvergeConsole
®
(QCC),
provides single-pane-of-glass management across generations of QLogic
FC adapters. In addition, QLogic supports all major APIs for deployment
exibility and integration with third-party management tools, including
VMware vCenter
™
and Brocade Network Advisor.
HIGH AVAILABILITY AND RELIABILITY
QLogic Enhanced Gen 5 FC Adapters continue the tradition of complete
port-level isolation across the FC controller architecture. This architecture,
unlike other vendor solutions, provides independent function, transmit and
receive buffers, an on-chip CPU, DMA channels, and a rmware image for
each port. These features enable complete port-level isolation, prevent
errors and rmware crashes from propagating across all ports, and
provide predictable and scalable performance across all ports. The QLogic
architecture delivers ultimate reliability to meet the needs of mission-
critical enterprise applications with lower power and fewer CPU cycles, all
while maintaining peak performance.
In addition, overlapping protection domains (OPDs) ensure the highest level
of reliability as data moves to and from the PCI
®
bus and FC network.
The QLE2694/QLE2694L Adapters also provide end-to-end data integrity
with support for T10 Protection Information (T10 PI), which prevents the
risk of silent data corruption in environments running Oracle
®
Linux
®
with
the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.