Start-up VirtenSys improves workload performance with virtual I/O

Sharing I/O adapters across servers eliminates bottleneck, company says

A start-up called VirtenSys is aiming to reduce data center complexity and expense by virtualizing the I/O resources that connect servers and storage to the network.

The company this week said it is developing a PCIe switch that consolidates and virtualizes standard I/O adapters, allowing them to be shared by multiple physical and virtual servers. VirtenSys says the technology can reduce the number of required I/O components and cables by as much as 90% while improving throughput and reliability and lowering power consumption.

"I/O is the new data center bottleneck," says VirtenSys vice president of business development Bob Napaa. Server virtualization and multicore processors are forcing IT shops to purchase more I/O adapters, which tend to be over-provisioned and underutilized, he says.

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A start-up called VirtenSys is aiming to reduce data center complexity and expense by virtualizing the I/O resources that connect servers and storage to the network.

The company this week said it is developing a PCIe switch that consolidates and virtualizes standard I/O adapters, allowing them to be shared by multiple physical and virtual servers. VirtenSys says the technology can reduce the number of required I/O components and cables by as much as 90% while improving throughput and reliability and lowering power consumption.

"I/O is the new data center bottleneck," says VirtenSys vice president of business development Bob Napaa. Server virtualization and multicore processors are forcing IT shops to purchase more I/O adapters, which tend to be over-provisioned and underutilized, he says.

With VirtenSys, I/O adapters are plugged into the PCIe switch, rather than directly into the server. The I/O resources are aggregated and presented back to servers as virtual images. Supported adapters include 1G or 10GbE network interface cards, 4G or 8Gbps Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, and 3G or 6Gbps RAID controllers.

Because the switch -- dubbed VMX-5000 -- uses PCI Express, it is compatible with virtually every server on the market and can be deployed without disrupting existing systems and management processes, according to VirtenSys.

The I/O virtualization technology is similar to a product announced last August by NextIO.  

VirtenSys has partnerships with server virtualization vendors VMware and Citrix to integrate technology and improve performance of applications running on virtual servers.

When Citrix's hypervisor is combined with VirtenSys's I/O virtualization switch, "a virtualized server is easily capable of sustaining 10Gbps communication for network and storage traffic, with minimal overhead on the hypervisor and guest VMs," says Citrix's virtualization CTO, Simon Crosby, in a press release.

VirtenSys will sell its technology through OEM deals, and says it has an agreement to ship with a line of blade servers in the fourth quarter of 2009.

VirtenSys has secured a total of $30 million in funding over two rounds in 2006 and 2008 from investors Scottish Equity Partners, Celtic House and GIMV.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.