… Emulex …

Emulex Corporation announced that its LightPulse 16Gb FC HBAs and prior generations of I/O connectivity solutions have inbox driver support with the release of Windows Server 2012, delivering more than a million IOPS on a single port, the highest level of FC adapter performance available, which is needed for the pervasive deployment of virtualization and public and private cloud infrastructures.

Emulex inbox 16GFC driver support, combined with LightPulse Virtual HBA technology and the recent integration of OneCommand Vision for Windows Server 2012 customers, allows cloud and virtual workloads to scale by dedicating logical resources to guest applications over a shared physical I/O and storage infrastructure.

"Emulex provides I/O connectivity solutions spanning generations of protocols, as well as I/O management for Windows 2012 users," said Shaun Walsh, SVP of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "As enterprises transition workloads to private and public cloud infrastructures, this high speed connectivity and visibility into network and storage traffic becomes a critical element in successful, high-performance virtualized and cloud data centers."

16GFC adapters are built for the demanding cloud and virtualized environments and have field-proven reliability with over 12 million ports shipped worldwide to date. They are the highest performing adapters on the market, delivering more than a million IOPS on a single port (based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing) and slashing the response time by 75% compared to its 8GFC predecessor (ESG Lab Validation Report, February 2012).

"Windows Server 2012 is designed for the evolving data center that is transitioning from virtualized to shared public or private cloud environments. The ability to process data efficiently with visibility throughout the infrastructure is now a crucial success factor for achieving desired VM densities," said Sandeep Singhal, GM, Windows Networking, Microsoft. "Emulex is supporting this evolution with high performance connectivity solutions for Windows Server 2012 that provide tight integration and compatibility with existing infrastructures and promote the transition to software-defined networking."

Emulex I/O technology and management
addresses the following virtualized data center needs:

• 16GFC In-Box Drivers: LightPulse 16GFC in-box driver support for Windows Server 2012 enables virtualized platforms to scale cloud and VM density to reduce costs.
• Support for Highly Virtualized and Shared Cloud Environments: 16GFC adapters feature performance with increased IOPS and twice the data throughput of 8GFC adapters (based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing) for virtualized data centers; greater VM density required for shared public and private cloud deployments; and the performance needed to match current and next-generation Intel servers with optimized handling of very large multi-core configurations.
• Increasing VM Densities: 16GFC adapters leverage Emulex vScale for scalability in Windows Server 2012 environments, supporting up to 255 virtual functions (VFs); 1,024 Message Signal Interrupts Extended (MSI-X) and 8,192 concurrent logins and open exchanges, up to four times the number supported by competing 16GFC HBAs, enabling support for more VMs per server than ever before. Integration with LightPulse Virtual adapter technology provides virtual port management within Microsoft System Center 2012 VM manager, allowing cloud and virtual workloads to scale by dedicating connectivity to shared storage.
• Time-Saving I/O Management: With a single driver model, the 16GFC adapters can be controlled, configured and managed from a single console using OneCommand manager, enabling enterprise scalability with time-saving features that provide more than twice the adapter management functionality and take half the time to install and manage compared to other I/O solutions (based on Emulex Labs benchmark testing.)
• Proactive I/O Management: Through OneCommand Vision, customers gain proactive I/O management, maximized I/O resource utilization and enhanced performance and availability by monitoring and analyzing critical I/O performance metrics, all from the applications perspective using the Operations manager component of System Center 2012. The new release of OneCommand Vision 3.0 expands device support to include DAS and logical storage devices and integrates with the OneCommand manager plug-in for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
• Backward Compatibility: For customers leveraging 8GFC technology within Windows Server 2012, upgrading is simple, with backward compatibility, a common driver stack and management tools across multiple generations of I/O connectivity products.

The development of Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) is another area in which Emulex is collaborating with Microsoft. It enables overlay networks, which allow virtualized workloads to  communicate or move across server clusters and data center boundaries. It has been designed to enable the efficient and fluid movement of virtual resources across cloud infrastructures in order to pave the way for large-scale and cloud-based VM deployments. Demand for overlay networking is being driven by the need to reduce the costs of deploying and managing virtualized server workloads and hybrid cloud deployments.

At TechEd 2012, Emulex and Microsoft showed a prototype FPGA technology demonstration of NVGRE.