8C2M1 Dell 32GB Emulex LPE35000 Single-Port PCI-E Fibre Channel HBA

Dell 8C2M1 32GB Single-Port HBA

The Dell 8C2M1 Emulex LPE35000 Host Bus Adapter delivers exceptional Fibre Channel connectivity with advanced PCI-E Gen4 technology. Designed with a single-port SFP+ interface and a low-profile bracket, it ensures seamless integration into modern data centers.

General Information

• Brand Name: Dell
• Part Number: 8C2M1
• Category: Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter

Extended Information

• Seventh-generation architecture supporting 64GFC and 32GFC speeds
• PCI Express 4.0 x8 interface for faster throughput
• Single-Port design optimized for enterprise workloads

Connectivity & Cable Compatibility

• OM4 MMF: 0.5m to 100m at 64GFC/32GFC
• OM5 MMF: 0.5m to 100m at 64GFC/32GFC
• OM3 MMF: 0.5m to 70m at 64GFC/32GFC
• Singlemode Fiber: Up to 10km at 32GFC/16GFC with certified longwave transceivers

Optical Data Rates

• 28.05 Gb/s (3200 MB/s)
• 14.025 Gb/s (1600 MB/s)
• 8.5 Gb/s (800 MB/s)
• Automatic detection for optimal performance

Hardware Compatibility

• Supports Intel x64 and x86 platforms
• Compatible with PowerPC environments

Port & Optics

• Single Fibre Channel port
• Short-wave laser optics with LC-type connectors

Controller & Bus Interface

• I/O Controller: XE601
• Host Bus Type: PCIe Gen4 x8

Environmental Conditions

• Operating Humidity: 5% to 95% non-condensing
• Operating Temperature: 0°C to 55°C
• Storage Temperature: -20°C to 85°C (-4°F to 185°F)

Operating System Support

• Microsoft Windows
• Oracle Linux (including UEK)
• Oracle Solaris
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• VMware vSphere
• Additional OEM and partner support available

Dell 8C2M1 32GB Fibre Channel HBA Overview

The Dell 8C2M1 32GB Fibre Channel Emulex LPE35000 Single-Port PCI-Express 4.0 SFP+ Host Bus Adapter represents a high-performance enterprise connectivity solution engineered for mission-critical storage environments. Designed to deliver reliable, low-latency, and high-throughput connectivity between servers and Fibre Channel storage area networks, this adapter meets the demands of modern data centers, virtualization platforms, cloud infrastructures, and enterprise application workloads. The adapter integrates Emulex LPE35000 controller technology with Dell-certified firmware and validation, ensuring seamless compatibility with Dell PowerEdge servers and enterprise storage systems. This category encompasses enterprise-grade Fibre Channel HBAs optimized for 32Gb/s speeds, PCIe Gen4 interface capabilities, and advanced protocol support, enabling organizations to scale storage performance while maintaining operational stability and investment protection. The Dell 8C2M1 adapter exemplifies this category by offering robust architecture, low-profile form factor, and compatibility with modern storage protocols, making it a preferred choice for organizations seeking to modernize their storage connectivity layer.

Enterprise-Class

The Dell 8C2M1 32GB Fibre Channel HBA belongs to a class of adapters designed to provide high-speed, lossless, and deterministic connectivity between servers and storage arrays over Fibre Channel fabrics. Fibre Channel remains the preferred protocol for mission-critical workloads due to its reliability, predictable performance, and mature ecosystem. This adapter leverages 32Gb/s Fibre Channel technology, enabling significantly higher bandwidth compared to previous generations such as 16Gb and 8Gb Fibre Channel. The Emulex LPE35000 chipset at the core of this adapter provides advanced protocol offload capabilities, ensuring that storage traffic is handled efficiently without imposing excessive CPU overhead on the host system.

High-Bandwidth

The architecture of the Dell 8C2M1 is designed to maximize throughput while minimizing latency across the storage fabric. Operating at up to 32Gb/s per port, this HBA supports high-bandwidth workloads such as large-scale virtualization, data analytics, transactional databases, and enterprise resource planning systems. The adapter's ability to sustain high I/O operations per second ensures that storage performance does not become a bottleneck as organizations scale their workloads. PCI-Express 4.0 connectivity further enhances performance by providing double the bandwidth of PCIe Gen3, enabling the adapter to handle increased data flow between the server and the storage fabric. This ensures that the Fibre Channel link operates at full capacity without being constrained by the host bus interface, making the Dell 8C2M1 well-suited for next-generation server platforms and high-density storage environments.

PCI-Express

The Dell 8C2M1 Fibre Channel HBA features a PCI-Express 4.0 interface, providing a high-bandwidth, low-latency connection between the adapter and the host server. PCIe Gen4 doubles the per-lane throughput of PCIe Gen3, enabling the adapter to fully utilize the 32Gb/s Fibre Channel link without encountering bus limitations. This ensures that the full performance potential of the storage fabric is realized at the server level. This category of adapters is designed to support modern server architectures, including multi-core processors, high-memory configurations, and advanced I/O subsystems. The Dell 8C2M1 is validated for compatibility with Dell PowerEdge servers, ensuring seamless integration, firmware support, and management compatibility within Dell enterprise infrastructures.

Enterprise

Dell-certified HBAs, including the 8C2M1 model, undergo rigorous validation and testing processes to ensure compatibility with Dell server platforms, operating systems, hypervisors, and storage arrays. This validation encompasses firmware stability, performance consistency, and interoperability with Dell enterprise software stacks. The firmware deployed on the Dell 8C2M1 is optimized for enterprise workloads, providing features such as enhanced error handling, link management, and advanced diagnostics. This ensures that the adapter operates reliably under sustained load, supports rapid recovery from link disruptions, and integrates seamlessly with enterprise monitoring and management tools.

Emulex LPE35000

At the core of the Dell 8C2M1 adapter is the Emulex LPE35000 Fibre Channel controller, a high-performance chipset designed specifically for 32Gb/s Fibre Channel connectivity. Emulex, now part of Broadcom, is a recognized leader in Fibre Channel technology, and the LPE35000 series represents a mature, robust platform optimized for enterprise storage connectivity. This controller integrates advanced hardware offload capabilities, enabling efficient processing of Fibre Channel protocol operations, reducing CPU utilization, and improving overall system performance. By offloading protocol tasks from the host CPU, the adapter allows servers to allocate more processing resources to application workloads, improving overall system efficiency and scalability.

Single-Port

The Dell 8C2M1 adapter features a single Fibre Channel port, providing a cost-effective, efficient solution for environments that do not require dual-port redundancy or where redundancy is achieved through alternative architectural means. Single-port HBAs are commonly deployed in scenarios where cost optimization, space efficiency, and targeted performance are prioritized. This category of adapters is particularly suitable for virtualization hosts with multiple HBAs, storage gateways, test and development environments, and application servers with moderate storage connectivity requirements. By offering a single high-performance port, the Dell 8C2M1 delivers sufficient bandwidth for a wide range of workloads while maintaining a compact footprint and lower power consumption compared to dual-port alternatives.

Optimized

In virtualized and cloud infrastructures, storage connectivity plays a critical role in overall system performance, availability, and scalability. The Dell 8C2M1 adapter provides high-throughput, low-latency connectivity for hypervisors such as VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and other enterprise virtualization platforms. The adapter’s support for multi-pathing, advanced error handling, and consistent performance characteristics ensures reliable storage access for virtual machines, containerized workloads, and cloud-native applications.

Integration

The Dell 8C2M1 adapter is designed to integrate seamlessly with a wide range of enterprise storage arrays, including all-flash arrays, hybrid storage systems, and traditional disk-based storage platforms. Its support for 32Gb/s Fibre Channel ensures compatibility with modern high-performance storage arrays, enabling organizations to fully utilize the capabilities of their storage investments.

SFP+ Optical Interface

The Dell 8C2M1 adapter features an SFP+ optical interface, enabling high-speed, long-distance Fibre Channel connectivity using fiber optic cabling. This category of adapters benefits from the modularity of SFP+ interfaces, allowing organizations to tailor their physical connectivity to match data center layouts, rack configurations, and distance requirements. The Dell 8C2M1 supports industry-standard SFP+ transceivers, ensuring interoperability with a wide range of Fibre Channel switches and infrastructure components.

Optical Performance

Optical connectivity provides superior signal integrity, reduced electromagnetic interference, and extended transmission distances compared to copper-based alternatives. The Dell 8C2M1 adapter leverages these advantages to deliver reliable, high-performance connectivity across enterprise data center environments. The optical interface ensures consistent signal quality across varying distances, enabling flexible data center layouts and supporting both centralized and distributed storage architectures.

Compatibility

The Dell 8C2M1 Fibre Channel HBA is compatible with a wide range of enterprise operating systems and hypervisors, ensuring seamless integration into diverse IT environments. This category of adapters supports major operating systems including various distributions of Linux, Microsoft Windows Server, and enterprise UNIX platforms, as well as leading hypervisors such as VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. This broad compatibility ensures that organizations can deploy the adapter across heterogeneous environments, supporting mixed workloads, legacy systems, and modern platforms within a unified storage infrastructure. The adapter’s certified drivers and firmware ensure stable operation, performance consistency, and compatibility with enterprise management tools.

Use Cases

The Dell 8C2M1 32GB Fibre Channel HBA is suitable for a wide range of industry applications and use cases, reflecting the versatility and performance characteristics of this category of adapters. These applications include enterprise data centers, financial services, healthcare, government, manufacturing, research institutions, and cloud service providers.

Data Centers

In enterprise data centers, storage connectivity components must support a wide range of mission-critical workloads, including transactional databases, ERP systems, CRM platforms, and business intelligence applications. The Dell 8C2M1 adapter provides the high throughput, low latency, and reliability required to support these workloads, ensuring consistent application performance and user satisfaction.