Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced the results of an evaluation report by Demartek, a firm specializing in independent analysis and lab validation testing of server, storage and security technologies, that compares the ease of installation and use of Emulex’s HBAnyware® management software against a competing solution from QLogic® Corporation. Emulex HBAnyware is a powerful HBA management suite designed for efficient, scaleable administration of enterprise-class SAN connectivity. The Demartek report found that overall, Emulex HBAnyware was easier to deploy and use in large storage environments and has a more complete set of features than QLogic SANsurfer® FC HBA Manager, especially for setting detailed control and diagnosis of HBAs.
“Demartek’s independent analysis reinforces the compelling benefits of HBAnyware for our enterprise-class customers. We designed HBAnyware to streamline HBA management within large scale storage-attached environments, which ultimately saves our end user customers both time and money associated with managing and upgrading SAN connectivity,” said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Emulex. “HBAnyware centralizes HBA management and automates key administration tasks to ensure SAN Best Practices are leveraged across the entire data center.” HBAnyware has several key advantages, which eases deployment and provides more comprehensive management of host bus adapters, ultimately reducing total cost of ownership for large-scale enterprise users. IT professionals don’t have time to spend deploying, installing and configuring each HBA. With HBAnyware these processes are streamlined and can be automatically deployed across all HBAs in the SAN. In addition, HBAnyware provides more complete and intuitive tools for troubleshooting and administration that allow end users to optimize their SAN environment. Key highlights of the Demartek report include: - Deployment: Emulex HBAnyware arrives pre-packaged with its LightPulse family of HBAs and is easily installed with the driver, in the span of a few mouse clicks rather than the ten steps required to install QLogic SANsurfer FC HBA Manager. - Installation: HBAnyware installation was accomplished in under two minutes and no reboots were required with minimal interaction with the administrator. Testers felt the Emulex technique of preloading the entire HBA software stack simplifies batch deployment of a common image to a large numbers of servers. - Configuration: HBAnyware was easier to configure by performing discovery in-band by default, with the option of out-of-band discovery. The automatic and immediate discovery of all Emulex HBAs in the local server and those visible in the FC SAN from that host is accomplished without any manual intervention. - Administration: Day-to-day administrative tasks using HBAnyware, such as firmware updates and diagnostic tests, are easier to find and deploy than with QLogic’s implementation. Key differentiators include HBAnyware’s event logging function and the ability to set parameters across any or all servers without the need to reboot the server. - Troubleshooting: HBAnyware has several settings that can be changed under the “Driver Parameters” tab including queue depth and coalesce response count, along with a description of the feature and the range of allowable values, which is a benefit to administrators who may need a reminder for the many parameters that can be adjusted. There is no equivalent function in the QLogic product. “Overall, Demartek found that Emulex’s HBAnyware was easier to use, more intuitive and required fewer steps to perform most functions,” said Dennis Martin, president of Demartek. “We felt that HBAnyware lends itself to scaling out to large environments, as many functions are visibly present for the easiest installation and management of large numbers of HBAs.” Emulex’s HBAnyware simplifies storage networking management and reduces planned downtime by allowing HBAs to be independently and uniformly configured and managed. This contributes to lowering the total cost of ownership. These capabilities provide end users with critical time -and cost-savings, especially when leveraged in large-scale enterprise environments with thousands of SAN-attached servers, multiple operating systems or numerous data centers. Emulex HBAnyware and QLogic SANsurfer® FC HBA Manager underwent testing at Demartek facilities, using two identical servers running Windows 2003 Server R2 Enterprise Edition. The full evaluation results can by viewed at www.demartek.com.