Chelsio: Terminator 5/6 Unified Wire Adapters Validated for Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct Deployments

Chelsio Communications, Inc. announced that its line of Terminator 5 and 6 (T5 and T6) 1/10/25/40/50/100GbE iWARP (RDMA/TCP) enabled Unified Wire adapters have been independently validated as providing full support for hyper-converged Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) deployments without requiring Top-of-Rack (ToR) switches to support Data Center Bridging (DCB) capabilities.

Hypeconverged Storage Spaces Direct configurations use ‘Network QoS’ capabilities to ensure that the software-defined storage cluster has adequate bandwidth to communicate between the nodes to ensure resiliency and performance. The bandwidth allocation capabilities can be offloaded onto the company’s Unified Wire adapters, bypassing the OS and without requiring expensive DCB-capable switch hardware, thus resulting in improved ROI and simplified management.

Storage Spaces Direct test results using Network (NIC) and iWARP RDMA bandwidth, with and without Network QoS enabled in S2D environments demonstrate excellent rate-limiting capabilities of the company’s iWARP adapters in converged network traffic scenarios across physical and virtual network ports.

The firm’s T5 and T6 iWARP adapters enable building efficient, performance, Microsoft Cloud deployments quickly. iWARP works with any legacy Ethernet switch, thereby enabling incremental Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct installations without requiring a concurrent forklift upgrade of the switch infrastructure, or the entire datacenter. This ability to work with any non-DCBX switch, allows use of the most cost effective new or existing switch infrastructure with the least amount of support, while enabling an immediate plug-and-play deployment. In addition, Microsoft Corp.‘s support of iWARP protocol since Windows Server 2012-R2 release, has allowed for years of testing for a robust, tested, deployment with iWARP.

“Chelsio’s T5 & T6 based solutions enable high-performance Windows Storage Spaces Direct installations without requiring a concurrent upgrade of the switch infrastructure and help customers to efficiently and cost-effectively scale their Microsoft Cloud environments to derive the full benefit of cloud computing,” said Kianoosh Naghshineh, CEO, Chelsio. “This announcement represents th unique value delivered by our iWARP ofering to help customers simplify and accelerate their journey to the cloud.“

“iWARP is the preferred high performance RDMA over Ethernet solution for Microsoft private clouds, and allows leveraging existing Ethernet infrastructure for hyper-converged Storage Spaces Direct without the limitations, complexity and costs of other RDMA protocols,” said Daniel Weissenborn, enterprise architect, ClearPointe, Inc., a Gold level Microsoft datacenter partner. “Chelsio adapters have proven to be zero fuss, high throughput and low latency, exactly what you need to fully leverage and scale high performance Software Defined Datacenters.“

“Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct brings cloud architecture and HPC prowess to the software-defined datacenter,” said Paul Schnackenburg, president, Expert IT Solutions LLC, a Windows Server-focused IT consultancy. “Hyperconverged Storage Spaces Direct appliances powered by Chelsio iWARP RDMA adapters greatly improve S2D networking and dramatically reduce the IT infrastructure TCO.“

Additional information regarding iWARP support of Network QoS capabilities for hyper-converged Storage Spaces Direct deployments in a network switch-independent means is available in a Chelsio Technical Brief and Microsoft-published blog.