Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers
IT organizations are taking advantage of virtualization to consolidate server infrastructure, reduce power, cooling and management costs, and provide simpler and more affordable solutions for high availability, load balancing, and disaster recovery. Servers based on multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors with Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) help to magnify the benefits of virtualization, by enabling higher consolidation ratios and better application performance.
Recent enhancements to Intel VT are directed at solving the next virtualization challenge: delivering fast and scalable I/O bandwidth for virtualized servers. These new technologies can help IT organizations further increase consolidation ratios, virtualize a wider range of applications, and manage workloads more effectively. They also provide a necessary prerequisite for next-generation cloud computing models, which will ultimately deliver another major leap in data center efficiency through enhanced automation and more dynamic control of hardware and software assets.
I/O Challenges in Virtualized Servers
The cost benefits of virtualization are roughly proportional to consolidation ratios. However, as the number of virtual machines (VMs) per server increases, so does the volume and complexity of I/O traffic. This can introduce a number of challenges for IT organizations by:
• Creating data access and networking latencies that negatively impact application performance.
• Introducing I/O bottlenecks that limit the number of VMs that can be hosted per physical server.
• Slowing-down or preventing live migration (the transfer of a running VM from one physical server to another).
To address these I/O challenges, Intel has extended Intel VT to provide hardware-based assistance for I/O virtualization processes and to complement the Single Root I/O Virtualization and Sharing (SR-IOV) specification created by the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group* (PCI-SIG*). SR-IOV enables efficient sharing of a single I/O device among multiple VMs. Coupled with Intel® VT for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d), it provides a foundation for efficiently utilizing I/O resources while achieving near-native I/O performance (i.e., nearly the same I/O performance as in a non-virtualized server environment).
Read the full Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers White Paper.
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Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers
IT organizations are taking advantage of virtualization to consolidate server infrastructure, reduce power, cooling and management costs, and provide simpler and more affordable solutions for high availability, load balancing, and disaster recovery. Servers based on multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors with Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) help to magnify the benefits of virtualization, by enabling higher consolidation ratios and better application performance.
Recent enhancements to Intel VT are directed at solving the next virtualization challenge: delivering fast and scalable I/O bandwidth for virtualized servers. These new technologies can help IT organizations further increase consolidation ratios, virtualize a wider range of applications, and manage workloads more effectively. They also provide a necessary prerequisite for next-generation cloud computing models, which will ultimately deliver another major leap in data center efficiency through enhanced automation and more dynamic control of hardware and software assets.
I/O Challenges in Virtualized Servers
The cost benefits of virtualization are roughly proportional to consolidation ratios. However, as the number of virtual machines (VMs) per server increases, so does the volume and complexity of I/O traffic. This can introduce a number of challenges for IT organizations by:
• Creating data access and networking latencies that negatively impact application performance.
• Introducing I/O bottlenecks that limit the number of VMs that can be hosted per physical server.
• Slowing-down or preventing live migration (the transfer of a running VM from one physical server to another).
To address these I/O challenges, Intel has extended Intel VT to provide hardware-based assistance for I/O virtualization processes and to complement the Single Root I/O Virtualization and Sharing (SR-IOV) specification created by the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group* (PCI-SIG*). SR-IOV enables efficient sharing of a single I/O device among multiple VMs. Coupled with Intel® VT for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d), it provides a foundation for efficiently utilizing I/O resources while achieving near-native I/O performance (i.e., nearly the same I/O performance as in a non-virtualized server environment).
Read the full Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers White Paper.
