David Galton-Fenzi, director of sales and marketing, Zycko looks at the emergence of virtualisation Virtualisation has quickly emerged from relative obscurity to now being widely accepted as an essential enabling technology for the modern data centre. By allowing software to take advantage of existing hardware, this pioneering ‘pooling’ methodology reduces infrastructure costs, with organisations realising both financial savings and energy efficiency targets.
As a recent phenomenon, the industry is still coming to terms with virtualisation and its implications. An evident unwanted consequence is reduced throughput: data congestion and input/output (I/O) bottlenecks, as cables and network switches struggle to cope with the increased loads.

The first thought would be to increase cabling in the data centre, but both the financial and environmental implications make this all but untenable. So the logical next step in the evolution of the technology is to virtualise the loads themselves.
Input/Output (I/O) virtualisation is used to boost the performance of individual servers by providing them with virtual Network Interface Cards (NICs) and Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs) that each server can then use to maximise data transference.

Xsigo is recognised as the I/O virtualisation trailblazer. Under our distribution deal with the vendor, the UK channel now has access to Xsigo’s I/O Director– a gateway box that uses a PCI-based InfiniBand backbone to pipe messages from the server-orientated Host Channel Adaptors (HCAs) to its top-of-rack solution. The HCA appears as HBAs and NICs to each server and all I/O is then directed along the 20Gbit InfiniBand. It connects any server to any network or storage device using its specially-designed fibre and Ethernet modules. Take the following as an example of the scope of savings possible: a data centre manager responsible for a 60-server installation who deploys the Xsigo I/O Director, can realistically be looking at 20Gb worth of bandwidth through one cable and an immediate saving of £1m-plus, mainly due to the simplified associated infrastructure requirements.

While Xsigo has cornered the enterprise market, and boasts the more mature device, a second vendor has emerged to complement this offering and open I/O virtualisation up to SMBs: Virtensys. A promising sign for Xsigo; while I/O virtualisation has proved a hard nut to crack, the competition proves this is a sector worth fighting for.

Virtensys’ solution dramatically reduces data centre capital and operating expenses by consolidating and virtualising I/O resources once again. However, the makeup is a little different. This time each server is connected to the top-of-rack Virtensys Virtualisation switch by a single PCI Express cable. The servers then share HBAs and NICs that are plugged directly into the switch. The resulting virtual I/O resource enables simultaneous, active sharing with multiple connected servers, and connects them with storage and network destinations. The benefits are clear - power and cooling costs reduced by up to 30% and equipment costs by as much as 50%.

For organisations looking at reducing carbon emissions, I/O virtualisation offers another key benefit – as there is only a need to connect one or two cables at the back of the server, only one u server (as opposed to four) is required as this would accommodate more ports at the back to increase the bandwidth.

At present, Xsigo and Virtensys are the only players in this market (others do exist, but they require purchase of more LAN kit), and together they are leading a technology revolution.

Gartner identifies server I/O as a “...huge resource drain for IT departments” but it is also labelled as a disruptive technology: one that will only be implemented in significant data centre expansions or in new builds.

This is one of the most exciting new developments of the last 5 years, and the next jump in the evolution of virtualised services is already appealing to our resellers. Two streams are emerging as our channel partners look to cater for appropriately-sized customers. We predict that every new build data centre will soon incorporate the technology as the CRC necessitates carbon savings across the board, and data centre managers continue in their ongoing quest to do more with less.