… And Forthcoming Virtual Offload Technology

Emulex Corporation announced that, with the release of vSphere 5.5, Emulex I/O connectivity, monitoring and management solutions provide support and integration for VMware users across VMware virtualization management platforms and hypervisors.

Emulex also announces planned support for Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) offload in vSphere, with the forthcoming Emulex Virtual Network eXceleration (VNeX) virtual network offload technology which provides  performance for virtual networks and reduced CPU overhead on the host. In early engineering testing, VNeX technology is shown to improve network throughput by up to 130%, depending on system configuration.  

"The emergence of high performance Virtual Network Fabrics (VNFs) – virtual networks built on top of, and transparently over, traditional networking infrastructure – are designed to improve network flexibility and streamline network operations for virtualized and hybrid cloud environments," said Shaun Walsh, SVP marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "We have been collaborating with VMware and other ecosystem partners to bring forth a new generation of software defined networking (SDN) solutions that enable higher throughput, VM (VM) mobility and reduced complexity. These include our forthcoming Emulex VNeX virtual network offload technology, as well as our portfolio of I/O connectivity solutions that are designed for the most scalable, high-performance data centers today."

Leveraging industry standard VXLAN technology, VMware virtual networking solutions address some of the challenges of cloud and next generation data center networking by enabling flexible workload mobility inside the private, public, or hybrid cloud, and reducing the cost and complexity of network reconfiguration dramatically.

Forthcoming VNeX technology simplifies network scaling by enabling IT managers to adapt or provision the network as VMs that start up, shut down, or move, based on the VM’s specific workload requirement, thereby shifting available resources for other workloads on the logical network.

VNeX virtual network offload technology further accelerates vSphere performance by offloading VXLAN stateless offloads for virtual switches that support vSphere, allowing environments to more efficiently scale to meet the needs of customers while improving network throughput and reducing CPU overhead.

In early engineering testing, VNeX technology is shown to improve network throughput up to 130%, depending on system configuration.

In addition to planned VNeX support, Emulex connects, monitors, and manages I/O in vSphere environments in the following ways:

• Gen 5 FC Connectivity for Virtualized, Flash, and cloud Environments: Gen 5 FC HBAs, including the newly announced LPe16004 Gen 5 quad-port FC HBA, LPe15004-M8 8GFC HBA, and the LPe16202 converged fabric adapter,  enable up to 1.2 million I/O operations per second (IO/s) on a single port, with up to 75% reduced latency vs. 8GFC HBAs, addressing the needs of scalable private clouds, mission-critical application virtualization like databases, and VDI environments. The new Gen 5 HBAs further enable the full power of VMware caching solutions, providing the only balanced IO/s and low latency storage network to take full advantage of host- and storage-based flash cache.
• Accurate Network Monitoring: Virtual and cloud environments exponentially increase the potential for network issues with increased volume and variety of network traffic. The Emulex Endace portfolio of network visibility products simplify building and maintaining effective – virtual networks by recording network traffic and alerts with continuous 100% accuracy, regardless of network speed, or traffic type. The Endace solutions allow network operations (NetOps) personnel to identify critical network issues such as boot storms, switch failures, incorrect network configurations, and attacks, and effectively address them.
• Integrated Management: Emulex OneCommand Manager plug-in for VMware vCenter Server simplifies management of Emulex I/O connectivity solutions within vSphere environments directly from VMware vCenter Server, and within the vSphere Web Client. Emulex’s native mode drivers for vSphere 5.5 have full management support through OneCommand Manager and industry-standard CIM providers. In addition, OneCommand Manager has added support for single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), providing administrators with the ability to deploy hardware device virtualization on the I/O path within the server, maximizing bandwidth utilization for virtual server environments and hybrid clouds built on the VMware platform.

"vSphere supports the software defined data center, hybrid clouds and virtual desktops, and addresses the challenges of cloud networking by reducing network complexity and enabling VM mobility," said Mike Adams, director, cloud infrastructure product marketing, VMware, Inc. "Forthcoming Emulex VNeX technology and broad I/O connectivity, monitoring and management support can further accelerate performance of virtualized environments while improving network throughput and offering our joint customers a highly integrated, powerful and efficient solution addressing their data center needs."