HP UX Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Software manual Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results

The HP APA link aggregates provided outstanding scalable performance for various workloads when used in accordance with the recommendations in “Benchmark Components” (page 11) and “Configuration ” (page 9).

Link rate throughput is maintained for link aggregates with 2, 4, and 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports. A 2-port aggregate has a sustained unidirectional throughput equal to 2 individual ports, a 4-port aggregate has a sustained throughput equal to 4 individual ports, and an 8-port aggregate has a sustained throughput equal to 8 individual ports.

This section presents the following performance data:

•Unidirectional throughput with HP APA

•Bidirectional throughput with HP APA

Unidirectional Throughput Performance

Figure 1 shows HP APA throughput numbers with unidirectional transmit and receive workloads for 2-, 4-, and 8-port link aggregates.

Figure 1 HP APA Throughput for Unidirectional Transmit and Receive Workloads

Megabits per Second

8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0	Transmit	Receive
2-port HP APA	1891	1887
4-port HP APA	3786	3779
8-port HP APA	7546	7448

HP APA aggregates provide sustained link rate throughput for the unidirectional transmit and receive workloads, for any number of Gigabit links in the aggregate, up to the maximum of 8 ports in an aggregate. With 8 ports in the link aggregate, the throughput is an outstanding 7.5 Gb/s for unidirectional transmit and receive workloads.

During the unidirectional transmit tests, the CPU utilization (normalized across all 16 CPUs on the server) was about 7 percent, 16 percent, and 39 percent for 2-, 4-, and 8-port link aggregates, respectively. The packet rate was approximately 82K packets per second per port.

During the unidirectional receive tests, the CPU utilization (normalized across all the 16 CPUs on the server) was about 7 percent, 16 percent, and 37 percent for 2-, 4-, and 8-port link aggregates, respectively. The average packet rate was approximately 82K packets per second per port.

8