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Xsigo Appoints Mark Leslie As Chairman Of The Board

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Data center I/O virtualization company Xsigo Systems recently announced that Mark Leslie has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Leslie is the managing director of Leslie Ventures, a private investment company, and serves on the boards of a number of private companies and nonprofit organizations including Big Switch Networks, Librato Software, Model N, Pure Storage, SeaMicro Systems, Sugar CRM, Wall Street Systems, NYU Board of Overseers and NYU Science Advisory Board.

He is also a Lecturer in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Leslie was the founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas Software.

Xsigo Announces Certification And Support For Oracle VM

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Xsigo Systems has announced certification and support for Oracle VM, a server virtualization solution for both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. The combination of Oracle VM and Xsigo virtual I/O delivers cost-saving improvements for virtualized data centers.

“Server virtualization greatly increases the demands on server I/O, often leading to bottlenecks that can sap application performance,” said Bruce Fingles, Xsigo’s VP of product management, alliances, and support.

“Xsigo’s support for Oracle VM means that customers can now get 4X more bandwidth to each server to help them run mission-critical Oracle applications in a virtualized environment without compromising on performance.”

Xsigo Introduces First Adapter-Free Ethernet-based Virtual I/O

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Xsigo Systems yesterday announced a significant advancement in virtual I/O technology, simplifying and accelerating data center convergence – a key enabler of private cloud computing.

The company today released an Ethernet-based version of its award-winning Xsigo I/O Director, the industry’s first virtual I/O technology to leverage the standard Ethernet ports found on every x86 server.

The new technology helps customers drive enterprise efficiency – both OPEX and CAPEX – by connecting servers to every data center resource via a single conventional Ethernet server port. Unlike alternative approaches such as FCoE that require costly add-on cards, Xsigo’s new approach can deliver a complete end-to-end converged connectivity solution for less than $500 per server, or about 1/3 the cost of a converged network adapter (CNA) card alone.

Previously, infrastructure convergence meant purchasing add-on cards like FCoE adapters and PCIe link extenders that are disruptive to install, increase power consumption, and strain IT teams with laborious support tasks. Compared with these alternatives, Xsigo virtual I/O can save up to 80% on capital cost and avoid days or weeks of server downtime.

By connecting to servers via standard Ethernet ports, the new Xsigo I/O Director allows customers to:

  • Leverage the power of converged infrastructures with fast, simple and cost-effective deployment: Dynamically connect servers to as many as 64 isolated Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks with a single Ethernet cable to consolidate server connectivity and make private cloud architectures a reality.
  • Install on existing equipment without disruption: Companies can utilize the standard 1 gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet ports found in all x86 servers today – no special server hardware is required.
  • Spend less on new purchases: IT managers can save up to $5,600 per server by eliminating the converged network adapters required by other products.
  • Respond quickly to change: IT administrators can modify server connections in seconds via software rather than physically changing conventional adapters and cables, which can take hours or even days.

The new product installs in just minutes by connecting a server’s Ethernet port to the Xsigo I/O Director. Customers then install drivers to their server. Server I/O consolidation and management can begin immediately.

The Ethernet-based Xsigo I/O Director employs the same hardware and software platform as Xsigo’s proven InfiniBand-based I/O Director, which is deployed in more than 100 enterprise data centers worldwide and is demonstrated compatible with software and hardware from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Dell, HP, IBM, Hitachi, Oracle, EMC, NetApp, Cisco, Brocade and many others.

Available in September, the Ethernet-based Xsigo VP780 and VP560 I/O Directors are priced starting at $35,000.

PrimaCloud Taps Xsigo I/O Director For Cloud Strategy

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PrimaCloud announced today that it has deployed the Xsigo I/O Director as the foundation of its data center interconnect strategy.

The Xsigo I/O Director enables PrimaCloud to break the barriers of I/O throughput seen in existing cloud computing offerings, allowing end customers to experience application performance levels that would previously have been achievable only in purpose-built private datacenters. Additionally, Xsigo’s virtual I/O infrastructure allows PrimaCloud to automatically provision cost-effective virtual private datacenters for its customers within minutes.

With three years of experience providing cloud computing under the ENKI name, PrimaCloud management was seeing an increasing number of enterprise clients running database and transaction-intensive applications — such as Oracle — which required multi-gigabit connections to the vLAN and NAS storage to avoid I/O contention. In these applications the bandwidth required per virtual machine exceeded 3Gb/sec, which meant that a single cloud server running ten virtual machines required over 30Gb/sec total I/O bandwidth. Only Xsigo virtual I/O, with dual redundant 20Gb/sec I/O connections per server, provided the required performance. The Xsigo I/O Director’s low-latency bandwidth also serves to take maximum advantage of PrimaCloud’s SSD-cached NAS systems to delivery outstanding application throughput.

PrimaCloud’s automatically managed, hypervisor-agnostic cloud architecture requires a high level of automation to create and manage virtual private datacenters (VPDCs). The Xsigo I/O Director is able to automatically provision and manage virtual I/O and VLANs associated with virtual instances running VMWare ESX, Citrix, HyperV, and 3Tera’s AppLogic, under the control of PrimaCloud’s implementation of Enigmatec’s EMS, a cross-platform, policy-based automation engine. Using EMS to configure the I/O Director eliminates manual labor in managing VPDCs, as well as permitting automatic scaling of VPDCs to respond to changes in load, resulting in significant end-customer cost savings.

Xsigo virtual I/O is a critical element of the reference datacenter architecture PrimaCloud uses to deliver on the promise of cloud computing: cost-effective, on-demand computing delivered on a pay-as-you-go-basis while meeting enterprise requirements for performance and uptime. The simplicity of deploying Xsigo Virtual I/O has enabled PrimaCloud’s reference architecture to be deployed in any one of its 65 datacenters worldwide for public, or hosted private cloud computing, as well as at customer sites.

PrimaCloud Deploys Xsigo Virtual I/O To Deliver Enterprise-Class Cloud Computing

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Xsigo Systems announced today that PrimaCloud, a leading managed cloud computing services provider, has deployed the Xsigo I/O Director as the foundation of its new service offering.

The virtual I/O architecture allows customers to provision a complete virtual private data center in just five minutes, a task that would otherwise require days or weeks. With Xsigo, PrimaCloud maintains 99.99% uptime at 50% less cost and in 85% less physical data center space than would otherwise be possible. Capital and operational cost savings enabled by Xsigo virtual I/O are expected to exceed $1 million in the company’s first year of operation.

Xsigo virtual I/O allowed PrimaCloud to deploy a fault-tolerant architecture based on highly-dense, quad server systems that package 48 processing cores within a compact 2U high chassis, reducing data center space requirements by 85% compared with conventional 4U high servers. By providing 40 Gb of bandwidth to each server while consuming only two PCI slots, Xsigo virtual I/O allowed PrimaCloud to deliver superior performance from more than 200 virtual machines per 2U system, a compute density that is believed to be the industry’s highest.

Xsigo virtual I/O was deployed in conjunction with VMware ESX software and Enigmatec’s EMS cross-platform policy-based automation solution. The combination allows configuration changes to be completed entirely in software — either manually or automatically — eliminating the need to visit the data center. When adding physical server resources, installation only requires connecting two I/O cables, reducing configuration time by 90%.

Xsigo Systems To Support New Intel Xeon Processor Family

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Xsigo Systems today announced support for Intel’s next-generation Xeon processor family. The new Intel processors offer enhanced performance and throughput capabilities that are expected to increase the need for Xsigo virtual I/O as users migrate to high-density computing environments that demand greater I/O capabilities.

The new Xeon processors include architectural enhancements that increase both processing power and memory bandwidth. When users add workload to capitalize on these features, there is an elevated risk of I/O bottlenecks unless there is a commensurate increase in I/O capabilities. Xsigo virtual I/O eliminates I/O bottlenecks with dynamic bandwidth allocation that delivers performance on-demand to I/O connections over a high-speed 20Gbs fabric. Xsigo virtual I/O also incorporates quality of service features that reduce the risk of I/O resource contention, an issue that arises when multiple virtual machines compete for bandwidth on a single I/O link.

Increasing compute density frequently exacerbates I/O issues since high-density devices may lack the physical space to accommodate the needed I/O, particularly when blade systems or compact 1U or 2U servers are deployed. Xsigo virtual I/O eliminates this concern by providing up to 40Gbs of bandwidth to each I/O card or mezzanine card, or 2X to 40X the bandwidth density of conventional I/O.

Customers using Xsigo’s I/O virtualization products can reduce both the operational and capital costs associated with server I/O. Xsigo consolidates the I/O infrastructure and replaces physical network and storage interfaces (NICs and HBAs) with virtual resources that can be deployed on-the-fly. Compared with traditional server I/O, benefits of the Xsigo virtual I/O infrastructure include:

  • 100 times faster I/O configuration management
  • 30 percent less power consumption
  • 70 percent fewer I/O cards, cables, and switch ports
  • Predictable I/O bandwidth to applications via hardware-enforced QoS

This open standards-based solution, interoperable with servers and storage across most leading platforms, is designed to remove the constraints imposed by traditional I/O cards and cables that otherwise limit the flexibility to re-deploy assets. The result is a wire-once infrastructure where configuration changes are completed in minutes rather than days, are executed in software rather than hardware, and can be remotely managed. Eliminating the need to re-cable can help reduce operational costs and remove the risk of cabling errors that may cause unplanned downtime.