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Results tagged "IOV"

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What's Right And Wrong About IOV On The Motherboard

October 21, 2010 09:00 AM

Two months ago we were talking about when IOV would make it to the motherboard. Representatives from Xsigo played down the whole concept, arguing it was still premature . Perhaps they were right, or perhaps it was just misdirection on the part of Jon Toor, vice president of marketing at Xsigo, because buried in the details of HP's new server introduction, the SL6500 was IOV on the motherboard. The back and forth illustrates what's right and wrong in today's IOV world.

Xsigo Doubles Virtualized I/O To 40 Gbps

October 15, 2010 11:00 AM

Xsigo, the I/O specialist for intensively virtualized environments, has upped the ante with its I/O Director to 40 gigabits per second (Gbps) I/O per physical server. It was previously limited to 20 Gbps. That means 15 virtual machines (VMs) running on a server could be connected to both networking and storage through I/O Director, with one mission-critical VM assigned a high allotment of 10 Gbps of bandwith, while the others would still have over 2 Gbps each, with all traffic traveling over an Infiniband cable link between the server and I/O Director.

Xsigo Goes Ethernet

September 02, 2010 10:06 AM

The all-Ethernet data center took a step forward this week with Xsigo's introduction of its Ethernet-based IOV solution at VMworld. Xsigo is hardly the first vendor to introduce I/O Virtualization solutions based on Ethernet, which have been advocated for sometime by Aprius, Virtensys and Next I/O. Xsigo is the first vendor, however, to use the existing Ethernet adapter within the server to connect with the external card cage that houses the I/O adapter. Other solutions require replacing the adapter with a proprietary host bus adapter.

Dealing With VMware's I/O Challenges

September 01, 2010 10:36 AM

One of the key themes at VMworld this week is dealing with the I/O challenges that a physical host loaded up with a dozen or more virtual machines places on the storage and the storage infrastructure. This is caused by consolidating hundreds of I/O friendly stand alone systems into a few dozen hosts. While virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, it now makes every server an I/O nightmare.

The Inhibitors To I/O Virtualization

August 12, 2010 02:00 PM

In my entry "I/O Virtualization: When, Not If," I discussed some of the merits of I/O Virtualization (IOV) and the value in offloading I/O responsibilities from the hypervisor with SR-IOV (single route IOV). While SR-IOV and IOV may seem like great strategies, there are some inhibitors that need to be overcome. The first is OS or hypervisor support, and the second is dealing with the disruptions to the network and storage infrastructure when first implemented.

vSphere's Enhanced I/O Augments IO Virtualization

August 10, 2010 11:08 AM

As organizations look to reduce branch office costs by replacing their physical appliances with virtual ones, they also have to confront the growing problem of resource sharing. Loading multiple virtual machines onto a single ESX server can be a good way to guarantee that none of the VMs perform at their best as they contend for I/O resources. With the introduction of vSphere 4.1, VMware addresses this issue by making significant improvements to how the hypervisor controls I/O storage and network access.

I/O Virtualization: When, Not If

August 05, 2010 03:15 PM

I/O Virtualization (IOV) is an I/O card-sharing technology that lets multiple servers share multiple cards across a single, high-speed cable segment. The general purpose of IOV is to make it easier to share bandwidth among servers in a rack. The cards to be shared are placed in a gateway, and the servers connect to that gateway. Cards are typically shareable on a per-port basis. For example, a quad-port Ethernet card could be assigned to four different servers. The ports or cards can be quickly assigned and re-assigned to the connecting servers, providing some hot-swap like functionality to PCIe. IOV is still in its infancy, but it is destined to become a standard component of a data center architecture.

NEC Joins The IOV Party

July 12, 2010 01:24 PM

NEC has announced an extension of their ExpEther PCIe over Ethernet switch technology that will come to virtualize I/O resources so that they can be shared simultaneously between servers. The new IOV solution adds scalability, better quality of service while delivering on the promise of I/O on-demand, reducing capital expenses by half and power consumption by 30 percent. By combining PCIe and Ethernet, NEC makes I/O Virtualization (IOV) available and relevant to the mass data center market.

HP And QLogic Enable Any Protocol On Any Port

June 25, 2010 01:00 PM

HP and QLogic have pushed the ball forward in next generation networking and virtualization with an HP Flexfabric 10Gb/24 blade switch that allows the switch port to be configured as a Fiber Channel, FCoE, iSCSI and Ethernet port simultaneously. Flexfabric drives home HP's wire-once strategy. It's an industry first, and it's likely that other networking vendors will follow suit.

Will There Ever Be A Right Time For IO Virtualization?

June 25, 2010 10:02 AM

Last year, Xsigo and Dell announced a relationship where the server vendor would resell the IOV supplier's equipment. The move was expected to position Dell at the forefront of virtualization. However, difficulties in integrating IOV into servers cleanly and advances in bus and IO performance have done little to advance IOV outside of relatively niche situations like high performance computing, data modeling and animation rendering.

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