I/O virtualization picks up steam

I/O virtualization picked up some steam this week as two companies – RNA Networks and NextIO announced software and appliances intended to relieve congestion on server/storage networks.

RNA Networks announced new software called RNAcache that lets Linux or Windows x86-based servers to be clustered together with Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand in a network that can share memory from individual processors for bandwidth and I/O intensive applications such as simulations or large data set manipulation.

In an RNAcache environment, the local memory from individual machines is virtualized in a shared pool, from which application can pull memory as necessary. Starting at $2,000 per server, RNAcache consists of an RNAdriver on each server node that allows that computer to access the cache; the RNA Manager which is used to monitor, manage and provision server nodes and the RNAserver nodes that contribute memory to the cache.

NextIO, a server I/O vendor, is planning an appliance that is targeted at data center and high performance compute customers. The rack-mounted Express Connect appliance uses PCI Express switching technology to virtualize I/O controllers and share them across the environment. The NextIO appliance supports iSCSI, Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand. It allows servers to assume a personality and be provisioned in minutes. Express Connect appliances can be stacked for added performance. For example, a 3U configuration with 4 terabytes of solid state disk (NextIO recently partnered with Marvell for SSD capability) can deliver over 1 million IOPs and use less than 500 watts of power.

At SIFMA 2009, NextIO will demonstrate a package that can achieve more than 200,000 IOPs and 1TB per PCI Express slot.
NextIO was founded in 2003. Its Express Connect platform is server, operating system and hypervisor agnostic.

Meanwhile HP inked an agreement in April with start-up Fusion-IO to add their drop-in PCIe adapter into HP's StorageWorks portfolio in which it will become the HP StorageWorks IO Accelerator. Fusion-IO claims that its adapter runs 100,000 IOPs with just 6 watts of power consumption. An 80GB HP StorageWorks IO Accelerator is now available for $4,400.