Date: 10/06/2010

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 now supports Exar's X3100 family with SR-IOV

Exar has announced integrated support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5, for Exar's third generation of Neterion X3100 10 Gigabit Ethernet server adapters, which includes full compatibility with Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV). SR-IOV is an extension to the PCI Express standard that enables a single PCI Express adapter to behave simultaneously as multiple independent devices using a shared PCI Express physical interface.

Exar's Neterion X3100 server adapters leverage SR-IOV to enable IT organizations using the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. The X3110 single port and X3120 dual port server adapters provide the ability to virtualize I/O-intensive applications. The Neterion X3100 family can support up to seventeen independent virtual interfaces, with each virtual interface having the hardware resources of a full NIC, and the ability to support direct access from any Guest OS using standard drivers. Exar says this unique architecture allows the X3110 and X3120 to deliver near-native I/O performance to Guests, while preserving all the benefits of virtualization. The X3100 family also supports PCI Express Multi-Function Mode, which provides the same high I/O throughput for up to eight virtual interfaces.

"Exar's native support of both SR-IOV and PCI-Express Multi-Function Mode improves the migration path for Red Hat users to SR-IOV technology with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5," said Tim Burke, vice president, Linux Engineering at Red Hat. "This combined solution offers a more comprehensive virtualization platform for the enterprise, making it easier to optimize utilization of both compute and I/O resources."

Exar's IOQoS technology enables dynamic bandwidth allocation and assignment of Quality of Service (QoS) priorities per virtual interface, allowing virtual servers to provision resources on-demand. This technology is said to maximizes resource utilization and system efficiency while driving down operating costs and its hardware-based architecture delivers guaranteed service levels for QoS, bandwidth utilization, and latency for multiple traffic types, virtual machines, and applications that share a single physical NIC.

"By providing out of the box I/O virtualization support for Red Hat's KVM virtualization technology, Red Hat and Exar are enabling enterprise customers to run even the most I/O intensive applications in virtualized environments," said John Williams, Exar's vice president of Datacom and Storage. "This greatly expands the number of applications that can be virtualized, resulting in a dramatic reduction of both capital and operating expenditures for IT organizations."

To know more visit: www.exar.com.