Abstract

Broadcom commissioned Tolly to evaluate the Broadcom Emulex LPe36002 64G Fibre Channel host bus adapter in AMD EPYC servers, with the main focus on quantifying server-consolidation benefits versus older Intel Purley-class servers using 16G Fibre Channel HBAs. The project also examined the impact of 16G, 32G, and 64G Fibre Channel link speeds, compared NVMe/FC with SCSI/FC, and measured how newer PCIe and CPU architectures affect database and virtualization workloads.  

The report’s central finding is that a single AMD EPYC server equipped with a dual-port Emulex LPe36002 64GFC HBA can match the combined I/O-driven application throughput of four older Purley servers, each using a 16GFC HBA. Tolly attributes this to gains from multiple fronts: more powerful EPYC CPUs, improved memory performance and capacity, PCIe 5 server architecture, and the 64G Fibre Channel bandwidth available through the Emulex adapter. In the tested environment, a single 64GFC host connection delivered about 6,400MB/s of storage throughput versus roughly 1,600MB/s per Purley server using 16GFC, enabling up to 4:1 server consolidation for I/O-bound workloads.  

Tolly validated these benefits with both database and virtualization tests. In VMware ESXi 8 “boot storm” testing, one EPYC server with 64GFC booted 24 VMs simultaneously against a shared datastore, while four Purley servers with 16GFC each booted six VMs. The EPYC platform reduced average per-VM boot time from 31.54 seconds on Purley to 7.58 seconds, a 76% improvement. In Oracle 19c decision-support testing using HammerDB TPROC-H, 64GFC delivered the highest storage I/O throughput and shortest query times, while 16GFC clearly acted as a bottleneck. Tolly reports that performance roughly doubled moving from 16GFC to 32GFC and again from 32GFC to 64GFC.  

The report also highlights the value of modern protocol and bus architecture choices. In Microsoft SQL Server 2019 for Linux testing, NVMe/FC outperformed SCSI/FC with 38% more transactions per minute, 50% better CPU efficiency, and 35% lower P95 stored procedure latency. Tolly also tested the same LPe36002 dual-port 64GFC HBA in PCIe 3 Purley and PCIe 5 EPYC servers, showing that moving the card into the PCIe 5 EPYC platform reduced transaction time by 33% by removing bus bottlenecks. Overall, the report positions the Emulex LPe36002 paired with AMD EPYC as a strong platform for consolidating older Fibre Channel-connected application and virtualization workloads while improving performance and datacenter efficiency.