Mellanox Supports Citrix

Mellanox
Technologies, Ltd.
announced that drivers for its ConnectX EN 10GigE NIC adapters are now
included with Citrix XenServer 4.1, enabling plug-and-play integration
of NIC adapters that boost I/O performance for virtual machines (VMs)
while enabling I/O consolidation.

ConnectX EN 10GigE NIC
adapters offer leading-edge I/O virtualization features such as support
for hardware-assisted direct guest access, VM-to-VM switching, advanced
memory management, filtering, QoS and receive side scaling. These
features improve overall server utilization, especially in multi-core
CPU environments.

Mellanox’s advanced virtualization
features are compatible with and complement PCI Single Root I/O
Virtualization and AMD-V and Intel-VT features to deliver advanced,
secure and granular levels of I/O services to applications running in
VMs. LAN and iSCSI SAN (storage area network) traffic can both be
consolidated over the same 10GigE NIC, and in the future, FC SAN
connectivity will be enabled using the emerging FCoE (Fibre Channel
over Ethernet) standard.

By leveraging the ConnectX EN Linux
device driver, integration with the Citrix XenServer 4.1 I/O framework
was easily achieved, accelerating time to market significantly without
compromising stability. The currently supported paravirtualized I/O
solution delivers performance that will enable IT managers to replace 5
or more GigE NICs (depending on application usage) with a single 10GigE
adapter. Future hardware I/O virtualization features will continue to
deliver higher levels of features and performance, ensuring
future-proofing for OEMs and end-users that deploy ConnectX EN with
Citrix XenServer 4.1 today.

“Citrix delivers an end-to-end
virtualization solution with Citrix XenServer, XenApp and XenDesktop,”
said Phil Montgomery, Senior Director, Virtualization and Management
Division, Citrix Systems. “Usage scenarios including dynamic
provisioning of workloads, storage virtualization and consolidation
place more demands on server input/output. We are pleased to include
support for Mellanox’s ConnectX EN 10GigE NIC in XenServer 4.1, making
it easier for users to improve throughput and performance in a seamless
fashion.”

“Citrix XenServer 4.1 offers a powerful but easy-to-use server virtualization solution and fully
leverages the ConnectX EN 10GigE NIC virtualization features,” said
Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing at Mellanox
Technologies. “In-the-box support of our ConnectX EN NIC in Citrix
XenServer 4.1 simplifies deployment of high performance, feature-rich,
consolidated I/O solutions by OEMs and end-users.”

Mellanox ConnectX 10GigE NIC adapters with Citrix XenServer 4.1 support are available from Mellanox.

Mellanox
Technologies, Ltd.

Citrix
Systems, Inc.