Industry Resources
Aprius systems address the problems of server I/O (data and storage networking, and direct attached storage) performance and scaling in highly virtualized and distributed computing environments. This is an emerging problem faced by the pioneers of server and storage virtualization and is gathering more and more attention from industry experts, analysts and media. Some of the information covering these issues out on the web is listed below. As more information becomes available we'll post and highlight, so please check back in with us on a regular basis.
Blog posting by George Crump. "One of the key themes at VMworld this week is dealing with the I/O challenges that a physical host loaded up with a dozen or more virtual machines places on the storage and the storage infrastructure. This is caused by consolidating hundreds of I/O friendly stand alone systems into a few dozen hosts. While virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, it now makes every server an I/O nightmare."
Network Computing
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.
Network Computing
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.'
Network Computing
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).'
Information Week
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.
SearchNetworking
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.
SearchStorage.com
"IOV provides the ability to shift I/O resources as needed beyond the virtual machines on a single host and provide that capability across physical hosts. While IOV is sometimes looked at as a cost savings mechanism by sharing bandwidth across multiple physical hosts, it also provides data center flexibility. This allows you to virtually move bandwidth as needed between physical servers without having to touch those servers."