By Kevin Fogarty - If vendors including Cisco and HP succeed, in a few years you may buy more bundled chunks of infrastructure, and fewer individual server, storage and network pieces. Here's a look at how virtualization (and I/O Virtualization) is significantly changing server purchases.

Posted by George Crump: In my entry "I/O Virtualization: When, Not If," I discussed some of the merits of I/O Virtualization (IOV) and the value in offloading I/O responsibilities from the hypervisor with SR-IOV (single route IOV). While SR-IOV and IOV may seem like great strategies, there are some inhibitors that need to be overcome. The first is OS or hypervisor support, and the second is dealing with the disruptions to the network and storage infrastructure when first implemented.

By George Crump - 'I/O Virtualization (IOV) is an I/O card-sharing technology that lets multiple servers share multiple cards across a single, high-speed cable segment. The general purpose of IOV is to make it easier to share bandwidth among servers in a rack..... IOV is still in its infancy, but it is destined to become a standard component of a data center architecture.'

By George Crump - 'There is much discussion about wire-once strategies. The concept sounds like nirvana for storage administrators and network managers. Don’t worry about the backend protocol, just use 10GbE and use the protocol that you need at the time; iSCSI, NAS or FCoE. Wire-once is not without its challenges and a compelling alternative may be I/O Virtualization (IOV).'

NEC has announced an extension of their ExpEther PCIe over Ethernet switch technology that will come to virtualize I/O resources so that they can be shared simultaneously between servers. The new IOV solution adds scalability, better quality of service while delivering on the promise of I/O on-demand, reducing capital expenses by half and power consumption by 30 percent. By combining PCIe and Ethernet, NEC makes I/O Virtualization (IOV) available and relevant to the mass data center market.

I/O virtualization is still an emerging technology, but already there's a new startup dismissing the current generation of products...

A different viewpoint on I/O virtualization from Dave Greenfield, questioning if and when the technology will be taken up by the market.

Good ideas can still get funded, however, and VCs still seem to flock to the latest hottest thing, like the cloud. And there are plenty of strong prospects out there, some of whom might exert a significant impact on the IT landscape. So here are 10 data storage startups worthy of note

At the Interop 2010 show in Las Vegas, TMC’s CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) had a chance to interview Aprius’s Craig Thompson, VP Product Marketing.

When planning networking for virtualization, networking pros must battle a host of virtual network switch problems. In this article, we look at solutions to these virtualization networking problems using network edge virtualization technologies that include distributed virtual switching, edge virtual bridges and I/O virtualization.

What you'll learn: I/O virtualization can help storage managers optimize their data center operations. This tip examines the options and best practices for initiating I/O virtualization to reduce bottlenecks and the physical infrastructure of your data center.

A strategy session report by Information Week's Jake McTigue covering the emerging technology of I/O Virtualization

"The majority of vendors in the I/O virtualization space [are taking] a different path [to] implementing [IOV] on the server [via] a PCI Express (PCIe) bus extender to a "card cage" device that houses standard, off-the-shelf I/O cards and adapters. This method has been adopted by companies such as Aprius Inc., NextIO Inc. and VirtenSys Inc."

Virtualization and blade server technologies have enabled a generation of consolidated computing devices capable of cramming extraordinary computing power into smaller form factors. But the increased processing power per square inch has brought about a new I/O problem: The pipes can't move data fast enough to keep up with today's processors. To address that problem, new I/O virtualization products and standards are emerging to extend PCI Express (PCIe) pathways to separate I/O devices. This allows multiple physical servers and virtual machines (VMs) to share I/O resources.

An article comparing and contrasting I/O virtualization and FCoE. Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at Stillwater, Minn.-based StorageIO Group, said FCoE does not compete with I/O virtualization products as much as it complements them. Schulz explained I/O virtualization as the "close-in" solution -- the connections between the servers, I/O device and core network -- and FCoE as a data center and campus-wide transport solution.

What do Virtualization and Cloud executives think about 2010? Find out in this VMblog.com series exclusive. Contributed Article by Craig Thompson, VP Product Marketing, Aprius

Mike Vizard talks about the emerging trend towards virtualizing I/O, with some coverage of Aprius VP Product Marketing, Craig Thompson. "IT organizations with any experience dealing with the hypervisors in any of the major virtual machine platforms already know how poorly they manage I/O performance. It’s not likely that hypervisors are going to get any better at managing I/O as virtual server environments get more complex."

Aprius CEO, Varun Nagaraj, talks about the coming year in Enterprise IT. "The goal of infrastructure virtualization will be to think of the data center as a collection of CPU, memory and I/O pools that can be dynamically put together to support the needs of any VM."

Part 2 of Nigel's interesting take on the I/O virtualization trend. "One of the key technologies or principles in Rack Area Networking (RAN) is I/O Virtualisation (IOV). In fact, IOV is about to rock the world of physical server and Hypervisor design. If you work deploying VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer etc or if you have anything to do with the so called Virtual Data Centre, then you need to be all over IOV."

Part 1 in a very good review of I/O virtualization technologies, products and trends.

20min podcast with Aprius CEO Varun Nagaraj, posted by Carryl Roy of Virtual Strategy Magazine.Covers the types of challenges companies are facing within the data center network and why they need I/O virtualization technology, the biggest business benefits of I/O virtualization and how I/O virtualization affects the financial side of business, especially important in these tough economic times.

Continuing on the theme of whether FCoE and IOV are competing technologies or not, Gordon Haff, weighs in in this article. In the end he says "FCoE may not be I/O virtualization as such but it's closely related in function if not in form."

Scott Lowe tackles the Xsigo corporate blog posting contending that Xsigo's approach to I/O Virtualization is better than FCoE.

Article by Jim Duffy - The emergence of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, virtualization and unified switching fabrics is ushering in a major shift in data center network design: three-tier switching architectures are being collapsed into two-tier ones.

Highlights from VMWorld by Gordon Haff of Illuminata, including some coverage of I/O Virtualization, which was a prominent part of the new technology on show

From Steve O'Donnell - "I received a very thought provoking article about the relative merits of FCoE and Fibre Channel storage networks from Christian Illmer, Senior Director Application and Solution Management Enterprise, ADVA Optical Networking"

Despite all the hype, Ethernet-based data center network convergence isn't desirable or even practical today. Input/output consolidation within the rack is a good first step. We examine the options and benefits of I/O virtualization and convergence within the rack (with an emphasis on Ethernet). This document evaluates the benefits of server input/output (I/O) virtualization and convergence and converged data center networks. It provides a road map for adoption of these approaches.

Implementing data center server virtualization and storage virtualization is no longer solely the job of the systems, data center or storage teams. Network managers are increasingly charged with the task of networking the data center and storage systems, providing virtual machine management and troubleshooting virtual machines (VMs).

Posted by Greg Schulz on April 28, 2009: "There is an old saying in the IT industry that the best I/O, whether local or remote, is an I/O that does not have to occur.....I/O and general-purpose data networks continue to converge to enable simplified management, reduce complexity, and provide increased flexibility of IT resource usage. Converged networks and virtualized I/O are being used at both the server level internally with PCIe enhancements as well as externally with Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand... even SAS and SATA"

Virtualization has done wonders for server utilization and consolidation, but packing all those virtual machines onto a single server has created something of a mess .... I/O bottlenecks in virtual environments are a growing and persistent problem for data centers, as storage controllers and heads can become overwhelmed by I/O requests from virtual machines, creating processing delays.

Posted by Frank Berry: "The increasing adoption of virtualization is driving the need for new data center network architectures that offer improved I/O bandwidth without adding extra tiers and oversubscription to the network..."

Posted by Howard Marks, InformationWeek: "Another group of vendors, lead by NextIO with newcomers Aprius and VirtenSys, promise products that will extend the server's PCIe slots through a switch to an external I/O chassis containing additional PCIe slots..."

Part 3 of a series. Netronome introduces its solution and compares it to standard SR-IOV cards.

Part 2 of a series of articles posted by Netronome, highlighting the growing problem and possible solutions to manage server I/O in a highly virtualized environment.

With rising network traffic and the need for application awareness, content inspection, and security processing, the amount of network IO processing at line rates increases exponentially. This coupled with the need for virtualization, places a huge burden on the network IO subsystem.

Posted by George Crump: "The DAS vs. SAN debate will end up much like the SAN vs. NAS debate; a middle ground will be found where the users will choose what makes the most sense for them and there will be integration between the two worlds that will allow for a seamless transition between them. .."

At the heart of the Aprius technology is an I/O controller. Think of this I/O controller as a PCI-E switch that allows for multiple PCI-E cards to be shared. This can be any type of PCI card; 10 GbE, FCoE, Fibre, Compression Card etc...

Data centers need more ports than ever before. Converging the data and storage networks will slow that growth significantly, but IT teams still will have more ports to manage, adding complexity....

Posted by George Crump: "On the horizon is a profound change to the current data center fabric, possibly the most significant IT shift since the widespread adoption of the LAN itself: unification of the IP and storage networks..."

By Chris Mellor: "There are reckoned to be two candidates; datacentre Ethernet (DCE) which Cisco and Brocade support, and InfiniBand, pushed by Voltaire and Mellanox. Both DCE and InfiniBand virtualize I/O by having other network protocols run inside their fat pipes. But there is a third fat pipe that can be used and it does not require every server to have an expensive fat pipe adapter. Think PCIe. Hold that thought and read on..."

by Scott Lowe (ePlus): "Input/output (I/O) virtualization gives IT pros ways to maximize the benefits of server virtualization, streamlining provisioning and reducing the number of network interface cards (NICs) and ports used. In this tip, I describe how to work with virtual NICs and other processes, following up on my tip on basic I/O virtualization concepts."

By Scott Lowe (ePlus): "I/O virtualization is a new form of virtualization that is justifiably gaining attention in the data center. It's one of several virtualization offshoots -- such as service virtualization or facilities virtualization -- spawned by the meteoric rise of server virtualization. But what is I/O virtualization, exactly? And what benefits can it bring to the data center? "