Always the technology fashionistas, QLogic has added some “bling” to its new 8Gb/s quad-port Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) (QLE2564) – two shiny new heat sinks. “Heat sinks?” we asked. You can only imagine our surprise! For the past 18 months, QLogic has been touting its “Cool HBA Technology.” The theory of this highly touted feature was that QLogic 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs did not need a heat sink for reliable operation, but thermal images, such as those below, show that they really do:
What is most surprising about this sudden shift is that it took QLogic so long to catch up with the design best practices which Emulex and the rest of the industry have been leveraging since the beginning.
The fact remains that heat sinks are vital to achieving enterprise class reliability and are one of the best ways to cool devices in today’s high-density computing environments. As you can see in the images below, it has taken QLogic over 18 months to truly achieve its “Cool HBA Technology,” and even then, only after following Emulex’s lead.
So why is cooler better? It’s simple. Cooler operating adapters mean greater reliability – of significant importance to data center administrators, as properly cooled components have a longer operating life, better system reliability and greater Storage Area Network (SAN) availability, each critical considerations in blade server environments. The cooler operating Emulex 8Gb/s Fibre Channel I/O controller translates into 166% greater reliability when compared to QLogic’s QLE2562 HBA.
The real question QLogic customers and partners have to be asking now is “what about all those QLogic 8Gb/s cards in the field which have no heat sink?”
To learn more, check out the following:
Emulex Labs: Sometimes, Being Hot Isn’t So Cool: http://www.emulex.com/emulexlabs/?p=14
The Effects of Heat on Electronic Circuits and Devices: http://www.youtube.com/EmulexVideo#play/uploads/17/AQOaNX9C6JE
