Chelsio Communications, provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking and storage solutions, today announced Virtual Multi-port Software, a new driver that gives users of VMware ESX 4.0 the flexibility for virtual consolidation of existing Gigabit links over Chelsio 10Gb Unified Wire adapters.
Virtual Multi-port Software allows for consolidation of switch ports and cabling by using 10Gb infrastructure while maintaining the existing Gigabit-based ESX setup. The software enables the consolidation by keeping the infrastructure update completely transparent to the ESX hypervisor, enabling a 10Gb adapter to appear to the hypervisor as eight virtual Gigabit adapters. By offloading the tasks performed by the hypervisor, the Chelsio adapters can deliver the best I/O performance for virtualized applications.
An ESX server typically generates four categories of traffic (Virtual Machine I/O, SAN/NAS, VMotion Network, and Console Management). Chelsio’s software segregates all these traffic types across virtual NICs while guaranteeing programmable sustained bandwidth in both transmit and receive directions.
The Chelsio Virtual Multi-port Software runs on all of the N and S class adapters, and is available as a free download from Chelsio and its distributors.
this is very interesting,The software enables the consolidation by keeping the infrastructure update completely transparent to the ESX hypervisor, .