10 GbE

Neterion, maker of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) adapters for server and storage environments, announced today that drivers for its 10 GbE adapters are embedded in the initial release of Windows Server 2008.

Neterion is one of only two 10 GbE adapter vendors to be included in this release (the other being Intel). In addition, Neterion’s adapters are supported in the beta release of Microsoft Hyper-V, the hypervisor software for server virtualization that will be available with various versions of Windows Server 2008.

From the press release:

“Built with enhanced Web and virtualization capabilities, Windows Server 2008 is designed to increase the reliability and flexibility of server infrastructures while helping to save time and reduce costs by consolidating applications with virtualization licensing rights. Neterion 10 GbE adapters include advanced silicon based I/O Virtualization (IOV) capabilities that eliminate I/O bottlenecks within virtualized servers.”

“Neterion’s 10 GbE native driver support for Windows Server 2008 will add new levels of performance and flexibility for an enterprise-class server platform,” said Sandeep Singhal, director of program management at Microsoft. “Furthermore, Neterion’s native IOV support for Hyper-V will enable IT managers to achieve optimal performance and manageability of their hardware resources.”

The Neterion 10 GbE Xframe drivers and adapters are certified to provide native support for several Server 2008 configurations including Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter. Each configuration offers a platform for deploying business-critical application and large scale virtualization on small and large servers.

Windows Server 2008 was announced on February 27th and Hyper-V is currently in beta testing and will be officially launched later this year.

[Source: Marketwire]

Neterion, an industry leader in 10 Gig Ethernet adapters for server and storage environments, today announced its third generation X3100 Series adapters at VMworld in Cannes, France.

The cards offload work normally done in the hypervisor – in most virtual machines, the network driver routes I/O to a virtual network within the hypervisor, which then controls the physical network interface. In contrast, Neterion’s X3100 series card behaves like multiple physical network cards, allowing each VM to have its own network interface.

“Virtualization is a key technology for reducing total cost and complexity. However, applications that required high-performance systems experienced I/O bottlenecks that limited their virtualization opportunities,” said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at The Linley Group. “The IOV standard was designed to eliminate these bottlenecks and open up all applications to virtualization. Neterion’s SR-IOV compliant 10 GbE adapters, with support for VMware’s NetQueue technology, demonstrated near 10 Gbps line rate throughput under VMware ESX Server 3.5. This kind of performance makes it possible to virtualize even the most I/O intensive applications in enterprise data centers.”

“This product announcement is a watershed event for the industry,” said Dave Zabrowski, president & CEO of Neterion. “With X3100 Series Adapters supporting full IOV compliance with a silicon-based I/O path architecture, all applications become candidates to run on a virtualized server. This means data centers can realize new cost reduction opportunities while maintaining performance levels comparable to non- virtualized environments. Our new adapter series provides the missing piece of virtualization to data centers that will undoubtedly accelerate the adoption of server virtualization.”

The devices are compatible with VMware’s ESX Server 3.5 and its NetQueue I/O virtualisation (IOV) spec, and can reduce CPU utilization by up to 50 % via a new Large Receive Offload feature, CEO Dave Zabrowski added.He claimed they are also the first of their kind to support the PCI-SIG’s new SR-IOV (single-root IOV) standard, which allows one adapter to behave like multiple physical adapters in a virtualized server.

“This product announcement is a watershed event for the industry,” said Dave Zabrowski, president & CEO of Neterion. “With X3100 Series Adapters supporting full IOV compliance with a silicon-based I/O path architecture, all applications become candidates to run on a virtualized server. This means data centers can realize new cost reduction opportunities while maintaining performance levels comparable to non- virtualized environments. Our new adapter series provides the missing piece of virtualization to data centers that will undoubtedly accelerate the adoption of server virtualization.”

[Source: The Register]

Neterion 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Drivers Embedded In Windows Server 2008

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