Mellanox Hardware-Based IO Virtualization Over VMware ESXi 5.1

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. announced the availability of Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) drivers for its end-to-end FDR 56Gb/s IB and 10/40GbE solutions over ESXi 5.1.

The new drivers enable direct performance for VMs, delivering a sustainable bandwidth rate of up to 48Gb/s of bandwidth to storage per VM and less than 2us for VM-to-VM interconnect latency.

They combined with Mellanox ConnectX-3 56Gb/s host adapters and SwitchX 56Gb/s switch systems, provide the performance and VM density for virtualized and cloud data centers while increasing data center ROI.

Taking advantage of Mellanox’s interconnect solutions, end-users can operate enterprise applications in virtualized data centers over ESXi 5.1 and achieve similar performance to operating over a native OS environment. This enables IT and application managers to accelerate their business performance over a more cost-effective and efficient infrastructure.

"Through our continued innovation, Mellanox has become the first company to provide a high-bandwidth, low-latency, end-to-end interconnect solution with SR-IOV over VMware ESXi 5.1," said Yaron Haviv, VP of data center solutions at Mellanox. "IT managers can now deliver uncompromised application performance over a virtualized environment to their users while reducing overhead, simplifying management and maximizing their data center infrastructure ROI."

Mellanox’s hardware-based I/O virtualization solution over ESXi 5.1 leverages hardware offloads to perform I/O virtualization functions and minimize overhead, allowing more CPU cycles for applications. In addition, hardware-based isolation of VM I/O in a multitenant environment will result in better QoS and enhanced security – all controlled by vCenter through a plug-in module.