MANCHESTER, U.K. and BEAVERTON, Ore. — May 18, 2009 — Virtensys™ I/O Virtualization (IOV) Switches establish breakthrough levels of price/performance and energy efficiency for connecting rack and blade servers to the data center infrastructure. In performance measurements, the switches not only delivered full network and storage connectivity bandwidth to each server in a rack-of-servers, but also dramatically reduced I/O cost and energy consumption compared to traditional solutions.
I/O Price/Performance and Energy Consumption
Rack I/O price/performance is a key metric that measures the cost of the I/O resources needed to provide the servers with the full connectivity bandwidth for accessing a corporation's network and storage infrastructure. These resources include the adapters inside the servers, the network and storage aggregation switches and the associated network cables connecting the servers to the aggregation switches. Rack I/O energy consumption is an equally important metric that measures the power required by these resources.
Figure 1 compares the total cost of providing 10Gbps of access bandwidth to each server for a rack of servers using traditional I/O connectivity versus virtualized racks based on Virtensys IOV switches. Figure 2 compares total energy requirements to provide 10Gbps of access bandwidth to each server for traditional and Virtensys virtualized racks. Both comparisons are based on the actual costs and measured bandwidth for 4-32 servers per rack connected to 10GE Ethernet and 4G Fibre Channel networks.
The configurations using the Virtensys IOV switches deliver the full network and storage bandwidths while reducing I/O cost from 50% to 80%. The IOV switches also reduce I/O power consumption by up to 90%. This represents the lowest cost and most energy efficient model for deploying network and storage connectivity to a rack of servers.
The total compute performance of a Virtensys I/O virtualized rack can be scaled with the addition of servers at very modest increases in costs and without impacting the available bandwidth or power requirements. In contrast, costs and energy requirements increase in a near linear fashion when number of servers is increased using traditional I/O methods. Simply put, the incremental cost of adding servers into a 10 Gbps infrastructure is dramatically lower using a virtual I/O deployment model. Similar advantages apply to energy consumption.
In addition, Virtensys IOV solutions reduce server management costs by more than 60% through the combination of fewer resources (adapters/cables/switches) and the remote management of these resources (including allocating, sharing, and migrating them between servers) without the need for physical reconfiguration of cables or aggregation switches.
Scaling I/O Bandwidth
A virtual I/O solution is capable of scaling not only the number of connected servers but also total I/O performance (bandwidth) far more cost effectively than traditional I/O solutions. As shown in Figure 3 (below), a doubling of total available access bandwidth from 10 to 20Gbps can be accomplished using a Virtensys solution at cents on the dollar. For example, access bandwidth per server can be doubled from 10 to 20Gbps at an incremental cost of 21percent for the second 10Gbps in a rack of 16 servers under a Virtensys deployment. A similar bandwidth increase under a traditional deployment model doubles the I/O cost. However, on a relative basis the cost of adding the second 10Gbps of additional bandwidth using Virtensys IOV is only 3percent the cost of providing the same in a traditional deployment. This cost advantage widens with the number of connected servers. As above, the incremental cost of adding access bandwidth is dramatically lower using a virtual I/O deployment model. The same advantages apply to energy consumption as more bandwidth is added.
In summary, Virtensys I/O solutions are attractive means for scaling the number of servers across a variety of data center environments, from small to large installations, and for any bandwidth requirement. Although the number of connected servers can also scale in traditional I/O deployments, it is significantly more expensive to do so relative to virtual I/O alternatives. The same cost penalty applies when scaling available bandwidth under traditional installations; a Virtensys IOV optimized, rack server installation can scale to support increases in access bandwidth requirements at a fraction of the cost of traditional I/O deployments.
"We are very pleased that our systems are proving to deliver enhanced I/O bandwidth without any performance degradation, while substantially reducing the I/O cost and power requirements," said Ahmet Houssein, president and CEO of Virtensys. "Organizations can now deploy highly optimized racks with I/O virtualization in their data centers at a fraction of the cost of their previous deployments and still achieve or exceed the performance levels they need to meet their business requirements. Further, our products enable IT mangers to dramatically reduce their data centers power requirements and meet their green initiatives goals."
About Virtensys I/O Virtualization Switches
Virtensys IOV Switches support Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to servers by virtualizing off-the-shelf Intel® 10GE NICs, Neterion 10GE NICs and QLogic® Fibre Channel HBAs. The switches don't require any changes to be made to the servers, OS or device drivers and can be deployed immediately without disruption to existing data center networks or management processes. Virtensys is continuing to expand its portfolio of supported data centers connectivity interfaces and I/O adapters including, in the near term, support for Direct Attached Storage by virtualizing SAS/SATA RAID I/O adapters.
About Virtensys, Ltd.
Virtensys develops industry-leading and patented PCI Express-based I/O virtualization technologies for servers and storage platforms. Virtensys systems revolutionize how I/O infrastructure is deployed and used in data centers and deliver dramatic improvements in I/O utilization, cost, performance, power consumption and manageability. The full capabilities of the Virtensys I/O Virtualization systems can be utilized without disruption to existing servers and networks in the data center, protecting previous investments made by organizations in their IT infrastructures. The products are deployed in traditional rack or blade server environments and in conjunction with server virtualization installations.
Virtensys was founded in December 2005 by leading technologists with years of experience in high-performance switching, networking and systems design. The company has assembled a stellar team of industry veterans drawn from Adaptec, Brocade, Fujitsu, HP, ICL and Intel. The Virtensys team is further strengthened by financial backing from several premier technology venture capital firms. The company maintains headquarters and design centers in the United Kingdom and the western United States to provide direct local access to its customers. For more information about the company, visit www.virtensys.com.
About Rack Configurations Used in the Comparison
The traditional rack configuration includes network (Ethernet NIC) and storage (Fibre Channel HBA) I/O adapters per server, network/storage cables per server and the required number of network and storage aggregation switches to connect the servers to the networks. The I/O Virtualized rack includes bare-bone server without any I/O adapter, IOV switch with a single 10GE NIC and 4G FC HBA and a single PCI Express cable per server connecting each server to the IOV Switch. For more information about the measured I/O performance, power and costs reported in this bulletin please contact Virtensys at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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