Neterion clears logjams in virtualised datacentres with souped-up 10Gbps Ethernet adapter

Neterion has unveiled a 10Gbps (gigabits per second) Ethernet adapter that helps clear traffic logjams in virtualised datacentres.

The new Neterion X3100 series with single-root I/O virtualisation (SR-IOV) eliminates I/O bottlenecks by delivering breakthrough performance in virtualised servers, said Neterion.

The X3100 series eliminates I/O bottlenecks by enabling multiple guest operating systems of a virtual environment to share one physical adapter through the use of physically separate I/O channels, while preserving all the advantages of virtualisation, including mobility and manageability.

The X3100 series is the first adapter to support the new industry-standard, SR-IOV 1.0 (Single-Root I/O Virtualisation). SR-IOV is a PCI-SIG workgroup extension to PCIe that allows a single adapter to behave like multiple physical adapters in a virtualised server. Neterion was a major contributor to this specification standard.

Bob Wheeler, an analyst at The Linley Group, said, "Virtualisation is a key technology for reducing total cost and complexity. However, applications that require high-performance systems experience I/O bottlenecks that limit their virtualisation opportunities.

"The IOV standard was designed to eliminate these bottlenecks and open up all applications to virtualisation."

Wheeler said, "Neterion's SR-IOV compliant 10 GbE adapters, with support for VMware's NetQueue technology, demonstrate near 10Gbps line rate throughput under VMware ESX Server 3.5. This kind of performance makes it possible to virtualise even the most I/O intensive applications in enterprise datacentres."