QLogic 2600 Series vSphere 5 Virtual Server Engine - Manual (Page 11)

Gen 5 Fibre Channel Improves Storage VMotion I/O Throughput
A process known as Storage vMotion allows for a non-disruptive migration of running VM disk files between
two different physical storage devices. This process allows for the VM to remain running with no need to take
its workload offline to move the VM’s files to a different physical storage device. Additional use cases for
storage vMotion include migration of data to new storage arrays or larger capacity, better performing LUNs.
NPIV zoning and LUN masking must be properly configured to ensure the VM and the host server continue to
have access to the storage after the migration is completed. Storage vMotion across a Gen 5 Fibre Channel
link can finish in half the time it takes with a 8Gb Fibre Channel link.
From vSphere 5.1 onwards, up to four parallel disk copies run simultaneously, making it imperative that all
paths related to Storage vMotion should be supported by high-performance Gen 5 Fibre Channel networks
in order to reduce the time it takes to evacuate storage safely to a new destination and resume normal
operations. Additionally, 10GbE links can replace 1GbE links to ensure adequate bandwidth for Storage
vMotion in Ethernet environments.
Faster Storage vMotion
A single-port QLE2670 Gen 5 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter can double throughput for Storage vMotion.
Storage vMotion at Gen 5
This bandwidth-intensive operation enables live migration of
virtual disk files from one storage device to another storage
device on the same host. Storage
vMotion
QLE2670 Gen 5
Fibre Channel HBAs
QLE3240 10GbE
Intelligent Ethernet
Adapters