QLogic Takes the Prize
We gave our Editor's Choice award to QLogic for its SANbox 2, a midrange switch with outstanding latency and throughput performance, good pricing, and excellent design. The McData Sphereon 4500 came in second with good latency numbers, outstanding price, but with the worst throughput numbers of the three. And though the Brocade SilkWorm 3800's performance was quirky but fine, that unit is simply too expensive compared to its competitors. Brocade's stand on interoperability didn't help its cause, but price was our main concern about that unit.
QLogic Corp. SANbox 2 | McData Corp. Sphereon 4500 | Brocade Communication Systems SilkWorm 3800
QLogic Corp. SANbox 2
Great features, reasonable price, and excellent performance, especially on our latency and throughput tests: That's what we call a hat trick. Add ease of use to this mix, and the QLogic SANbox 2 is the obvious Editor's Choice.
Built for easy access inside and out, the SANbox 2 is a 16-port, 1U, 2-gigabit Fibre Channel switch with dual power supplies set up in a redundant configuration. Power cords plug into the front of the switch, and the power supplies are hot-swappable. Forget the trip to dust-bunny land after a power failure; if a power supply fails, pull it right out of the front. The ports are laid out in two rows of eight, with both GBICs (gigabit interface converters) backing each other so the release for the optical cables is on the bottom. This layout makes it easy to remove cables. The front also features a link light, fan and temperature lights and a "heartbeat" that indicates the switch is working properly.
We liked the SANbox 2's design and construction, which reminded us of QLogic's SANblade 2300 Fibre Channel HBAs (host bus adapters). The insides are simple, with a single integrated chip for all ports.
This switch bested the competition in the majority of our tests; its performance on our latency and throughput tests really impressed us. In all but the full-mesh latency tests (which McData mostly won), the SANbox 2 had the best numbers. Latency, particularly on our latency-under-load tests, was evenly distributed. Only the SANbox 2 put out such even scores, a tribute to the switch's superior design. Furthermore, in the more challenging latency-under-load test, the SANbox2 behaved as consistently and predictably as it did in the standard latency tests.
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