VMworld: Virtensys Boosts Virtual Bandwidth for VMs

Network virtualization specialist Virtensys announced availability of a dedicated appliance at the VMworld conference today that consolidates and virtualizes network connectivity and provides up to 80Gbps of sustained Ethernet bandwidth per server.

Like the rest of the VIO-4000 series, the new VIO-4004 converts servers to high-performance and stateless compute nodes that can be interconnected by pooling, consolidating and abstracting servers’ I/O resources and state, according to Bob Napaa, vice president of business development, Virtensys.

Napaa said the VIO-4004 connects to servers over a standard PCI Express (PCIe) cable, virtualizes network interface cards (NIC) and presents them back to servers as a pool of network capacity.

The VIO-4004 virtualizes up to four Intel Ethernet X520 dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapters and provides servers with line-rate access to the network. The system allows the servers to simultaneously use and share the adapters. It creates up to 256 virtual NICs in each of the servers and provides I/O line rate to servers and virtual machines (VM).

Napaa claims the VIO-4000 systems eliminate network and storage access layer switches and cables from data center racks, reducing I/O power consumption, cabling and the number of associated management tasks.

Virtensys will be demonstrating the VIO-4004, which incorporates the Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520 family, at this week’s VMworld conference in San Francisco.

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