Dell News on Ulitzer

Dell demonstrated the industry’s first Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) solution based on industry standards using technologies from Intel and Citrix to help improve virtualization performance across networked servers and storage. The companies collaborated to develop technology based on PCI-SIG I/O Virtualization specifications and Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d) to allow multiple operating systems to share a physical interconnect

Functional technology demonstrations are being showcased at the Exhibitor Booths within the Virtualization Community at the Intel Developers Forum 2009, September 22 through 24 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif. Intel Developer Forum attendees can view the showcase at exhibit booth #711 and discuss it with Dell, Intel and Citrix experts.

The News:

• Dell and Intel worked closely with Citrix to develop a standards-based SR-IOV solution to help improve virtualization performance.
• This solution utilizes Intel VT-d and the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) device with support for PCI-SIG SR-IOV specification to allow multiple virtual machines (VMs) running on Citrix XenServer in a Dell™ PowerEdge™ R710 with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 to directly share I/O devices.
• In this solution, instead of a hypervisor virtualizing an I/O device in the software and sharing that emulated virtual NIC with multiple VMs, a single I/O hardware itself is subdivided logically to appear as 128 virtual NICs. Each NIC is assigned independently and directly to a virtual machine to provide precise per-VM control for connection speed and quality of service.
• Dell PowerEdge R710 server equipped with a SR-IOV enabled BIOS along with Citrix XenServer virtualization software is designed to use Intel VT-d and SR-IOV to remove I/O virtualization bottlenecks to increase performance, efficiency, and scalability with high performance I/O devices. In preliminary lab tests, this technology reduces processor utilization, increases bandwidth to virtual machines and improves data transfer rates across the network.
• In addition to improved virtualization performance, SR-IOV technology cuts hardware costs by reducing the number of physical network cards, cables, and switch ports required in a virtualization environment to connect storage and servers. This SR-IOV technology works with existing 10GE switches from multiple vendors and does not require proprietary switching infrastructure.