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Emulexs easily installable LP101 Fibre Channel host bus adapter should open up the world of storage area networks to companies with limited financial resources.
The LP101, which shipped last month, has a low entry cost of $333 per card and is geared to small and midsize businesses. The adapter is a single-channel, 133MHz PCI-X device with support for gigabyte-per-second and 2GB-per-second Fibre Channel.
In tests, I was able to install and configure an Emulex LP101 card in minutes using the LP101s included suite of Emulex AutoPilot management and installation tools.
When I installed the HBA, the AutoPilot suite automatically found the appropriate driver for my Windows-based server and offered to download the latest version of the driver.
The management portion of the AutoPilot suite let me check the status of my HBA cards and download and upgrade the firmware on my cards.
On the downside, in the effort to keep things simple, the Emulex LP101 is currently compatible only with Windows- and Linux-based systems.
More information is available at www.emulex.com.
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