QLogic Corp., a leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches today announced that its SANblade(r) 2400 Series 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs deliver excellent performance in VMware(r) environments. Running real-world applications like Oracle and MS-Exchange on VMware ESX Server, QLogic SANblade 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs delivered up to 38 percent more I/Os per second (IOPs) and throughput than the closest competitor as documented in recent comparative testing. While the competitor's HBA performance reached a plateau in tests with just two virtual machines, QLogic SANblade 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs continued to scale with four virtual machines and beyond.

"SAN-attached storage works hand-in-hand with VMware Infrastructure to improve utilization, simplify administration and reduce cost," said Brian Garrett, an industry analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "SANblade 2400 Series HBAs from QLogic, which have been optimized for real-world, performance-sensitive workloads, can be used to maximize virtualization while minimizing cost."

Virtual infrastructure products, combined with faster, higher performance multi-core CPUs require SAN administrators to plan for future scalability of server I/O connectivity. To meet the ever-growing demands on the SAN, it is imperative that enterprises deploy a scalable Fibre Channel HBA architecture that can address a full spectrum of concerns including cost, performance, backward compatibility and most importantly, scalability in virtualized environments. QLogic SANblade 2400 Series 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs outperform the competition in performance and scalability, which helps reduce both operational and capital expenditure costs by 28 percent in typical data center implementations.

"A growing number of Global 2000 businesses are addressing complex business challenges such as resource utilization and availability through virtualization," said Amit Vashi, senior director of marketing, QLogic Computer Systems Group. "QLogic 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs provide high-performance I/O processing headroom and scalability across multiple virtual machines enabling higher levels of server consolidation, which is critical to reducing data-center operational costs."