Posts Tagged ‘Xsigo’
Dell Covers Xsigo Virtual I/O at VMworld
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011Wall Street Journal names Xsigo as “Next Big Thing”
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011Xsigo has been named on the Wall Street Journal’s “Next Big Thing” list. This is a great honor. A field of 10,600 startups was winnowed down to create this list of the 50 most promising companies.
View the article and list here.
Xsigo is in good company on this list. Last year’s list included several companies that have since gone IPO, several that were acquired (two by Google), and one company (Zynga) who’s valuation now exceeds $1B, which is the limit for this list.
The ranking is based on four largely financial components and one qualitative one, drawn from these predictive indicators:
• People matter: A history of success for both investors and executives suggests future success.
• More money is better: A firm with more capital to deploy than its competitors will have an advantage.
• Growth is good: Companies with higher valuations for their equity are more successful than smaller ones.
• Intangibles abound: Company success can’t be reduced to an equation.
This is a great validation of the market potential and of Xsigo’s growing presence.
New England Biolabs Deploys Xsigo
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010Biotech firm deploys Xsigo in support of their back office applications.
Highlights of the deployment include:
- $30,000 capex savings per IBM BladeCenter deployed
- Server failure recovery in minutes, not hours
- Improved performance on Vmotion and backup
Why InfiniBand? The Unvarnished Truth.
Thursday, November 18th, 2010We all know that vendors sometimes, ahem, stretch the truth. So everyone looks to third-party reviews for unbiased commentary. It’s even better if that commentary comes from someone who’s had extensive experience with the product (think “long term road test”) rather than a cursory drive.
This is why I was so thrilled to see the comments below from Dan Shipley of Supplies Network.
Dan is a Xsigo customer. He wrote these comments in reply to an earlier blog post of mine that discussed the growth of InfiniBand.
Dan’s remarks very effectively get at the question of, “why IB?”
I thought they were worth highlighting, so I re-posted them below. (The picture above was pulled from Google Maps to provide a little visual context.)
If you prefer to read Dan’s remarks in their original form, you can find them at the bottom of this page.
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It is important to note that Ethernet is not a competitor to Infiniband on a features level, only on a price level. Infiniband has features Ethernet can only dream of. FCoE is a better competitor from a features standpoint, but it can’t compete on price or performance. 10G Ethernet is just faster Ethernet. Unless you are using one of Xsigo’s new Ethernet directors, it doesn’t give you anything but speed. In the virtual world, total cost of ownership is not driven by initial capital cost, but by ongoing management overhead, and system flexibility. That is why so many are moving to virtualized interconnects, like FCoE or Infiniband. However, when you compare the cost and performance of FCoE VS Infiniband, IB is the clear winner.
Take a recent issue we faced… We decided to build out a virtual desktop environment. Like many companies, we wanted to make sure that the PC’s were secured from each other (different business units), as well as from the servers, and our PCI environment. To do that, we decided to create separate groups of virtual desktops that each had a vLAN. In addition, we decided to add the DMZ vLAN to the mix.
In total, we added 5 vLANs to our VMWare cluster. For each vLAN, we created a pair of redundant vNICs (10 total vNICs on each ESX server). We have 16 ESX servers in that cluster, for a total of 160 vNICs across the cluster. We were able to create the 160 vNICs in about 15 minutes. Next, we configured the vSwitches on the ESX servers, which took about 45 minutes. So, in an hour, we had set up five separate networks (with redundant connections) on 16 separate ESX servers, without ever leaving our desks.
How much money did we just save over what we would have faced with traditional Ethernet? A ton, and that is if we could have even done it, as the servers wouldn’t have the room for that many NICs, much less the switch ports…
Looking to the future, not only does IB have a roadmap that keeps it ahead of processor and bus speeds, but it is also provides complete offload of protocol stacks by using RDMA enabled protocols, like NFSoRDMA and iSER. As storage vendors continue to push into SSD’s, file transfers are becoming more like a momory-to-memory transfer, which is exactly what IB was built for.
Some final thoughs on IB are its extreme scalability (clusters with over 10k nodes have been built), ability to automatically build meshed and trunked networks (that don’t have the LAG/Etherchannel limitation of a conversation being limited to the speed of a single port in the group), and the strong security model of virtualized Ethernet or Fibre Channel adapters running on a non-native (IB) transport layer, and it seems like IB is hard to beat.
The only real reasons I can think of to prevent architects from choosing IB more often is fear of a “new” network (i.e. the IT group doesn’t have any IB people), and fear of choosing a smaller networking vendor (i.e. not Cisco). However, after having used the Xsigo solution, having little IB experience is no problem at all. You don’t even know it is there, and don’t have to have any IB knowledge. It is kind of like an iPhone… it just works. As far as choosing a small/new networking vendor (compared to Cisco), having some major players like VMWare and Accenture choose Xsigo overcame any issues I had there. I can say I have been very happy with the solution, but more importantly, the support I have received.
I hope others considering Xsigo would take a closer look. Once you have realized that the future is virtual, there are two choices: FCoE and IB. If you openly compare the two, there isn’t much competition, and who wants to be locked into a single vendor’s expensive FCoE implementation?
Taking the Worry out of Virtualization
Friday, November 12th, 2010“The Scary Side of Virtualization.” That’s the title of Computerworld’s November 8 cover story that exposed a few “gotchas” to be aware of when virtualizing servers.
Is virtualization scary? Well, the article discusses several concerns, one of which is the co-mingling of data that should otherwise reside on physically separate networks.
That data must be protected. VLANs provide one way to maintain network separation, but Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald states in the article that “VLANs and router-based access controls alone are not sufficient for security separation.”
Yikes! No wonder one user, Jai Chanini of Rent-a-Center, comments that “for security reasons” his shop does not virtualize apps such as ERP, DB, or email.
Virtual I/O Eliminates the Fear Factor
Fortunately, virtual I/O provides a solution that retains the network isolation of a physical connection, without sacrificing real-time management flexibility. It lets you create isolated “virtual” connections that function exactly like a cable from the server to a specific network.
Here’s how it works.
- Create a vNIC in a server: The hypervisor views that vNIC as a standalone entity, just like a physical card.
- Create a vitual switch that is connected to that vNIC: In this example, virtual machine “A” sees only data from vNIC “A”.
- Associate that vNIC with a port on the I/O Director: Data from that vNIC then goes to that port and that port only.
- Connect a network to that port: In this example, data from Network “A” goes only to VM “A”. It has no path to VM “B”.
Even though VM A and VM B share a physical path from the server to the I/O Director, data from those VMs is available only at the assigned ports. It cannot be snooped on other ports, and there is no reliance on VLANs.
Isolation is the same as a physical link, but a lot more flexible. Should a server goes down, or if you want to move an application from one server to another, the virtual NICs and HBAs can be moved from that server to another device… and you still retain the original isolation.
If this sounds like something that could help you sleep at night, drop me a note and I’ll send you a white paper about exactly how this network isolation works. We have numerous customers who have virtualized their most mission-critical apps. And some of those guys are among the most security-conscious organizations in the world. If they’re not scared by this, you shouldn’t be either.
Why Marc Benioff, Vinod Khosla, and Ray Lane Invested in Xsigo Virtual I/O
Sunday, August 8th, 2010
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, recently invested in Xsigo. He joins a group of other savvy, high-profile investors including Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, and Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins, so he’s in pretty good company. Why would these guys — all of whom are adroit at spotting the “next big thing” — finance a data center infrastructure company when cloud computing is emerging as the future of IT?
There are three reasons why I believe Xsigo is a great bet for them.
1) Xsigo is an integral part of the cloud revolution. Inside every cloud you’ll find physical data centers. To reach the full potential of the cloud we are transforming the way those data centers are designed and run. Xsigo delivers a key part of that transformation, the technology needed to make data centers cloud-ready.
2) Xsigo is proven. Our gear is in production use at Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies such as Salesforce.com, Disney, Accenture, and Capgemini, VMware, EMC, and many others.
3) We are about to assert our leadership even further. At VMworld 2010 we will announce a new technology that every enterprise data center manager will need to consider.
So what makes Xsigo’s technology so compelling?
Building a more flexible data center
The problem Xsigo solves is data center inflexibility. Today’s data center technologies were not designed for the cloud. They were designed for the way we used to run IT, with servers, storage, and networks, interconnected by hard wires and fixed resource mappings.
For the cloud we want a resource-on-demand, utility model — an agile design that allows assets to be configured and then re-configured as needed. Whether the data center is hosting a public cloud such as Salesforce.com or a company’s own private cloud, that agility enables the flexibility and fluid scalability that make the cloud concept so powerful.
Xsigo has the technology to do this, and can do it in a very non-disruptive way. Unlike previous approaches to the agile data center (remember “grid computing”?), Xsigo fits in with existing server, networking and storage technologies. And it fully complements server virtualization.
Why Xsigo virtual I/O
Xsigo’s sells virtual I/O, a technology that brings data center connectivity under software control. That may sound a little abstract, but it’s actually pretty straightforward.
You’ve seen the typical data center with cables running everywhere. An enterprise data center is inherently complex, with servers, network switches, and data storage devices interconnected by miles of cables that are weaved into racks, under floor tiles, and through overhead cable trays. It’s a management challenge to install. And once completed, it’s very costly to change.
That inflexibility was OK in the pre-cloud era. Back then, servers ran just one application for their entire five-year life, so connectivity was simpler and far more static.
The cloud is real. And it changes everything.
In the cloud era, we place new demands on server connectivity. Now a server may run 20 different applications, which necessitates far more connections to networks and storage — 10 to 20 cables per server is common. The resulting complexity is not only expensive, but is also hard to change. Adding new servers takes more time, and reconfiguring existing servers is nearly impossible. All of which impacts scalability and flexibility, two core values of the cloud.
In a cloud infrastructure, the demands on a server will definitely change over time. Data center architects try to anticipate requirements when they design an installation, but doing that accurately over the life of a server is virtually impossible. A company may grow, enter new lines of business, or undergo a merger, all of which will change IT demands. Compliance requirements change. HIPAA, SOX, and payment card industry rules, for example, impact data center design.
And then there is technology change. During the next five years (the life span of a server installed today), there will be at least three new network types introduced. What does the data center manager do with the existing servers? Connect them to the new technology (a costly project), or leave them off the new networks and thereby limit his flexibility? Neither is an attractive option.
The concept of the cloud is to accommodate change. But to make change truly seamless we need a better infrastructure model – a more flexible data center foundation. And that’s what Xsigo is doing.
Xsigo lets you connect any server to anything in the data center, and then change those connections anytime you want… in software. And Xsigo consolidates those connections to just one cable. It’s the equivalent of having up to 64 cables inside one. Need to change the configuration? It’s a simple software command that can be done at any time without ever touching a wiring bundle or taking a server down.
The next wave in data center design
The implications of this are huge, big enough in fact to attract some serious competition. Cisco and HP both have virtual I/O technologies built into their server product lines. But Xsigo’s answer is better specifically because it’s not built into a server. It is open, which means you can connect all of your servers from all vendors to a single virtual I/O management environment – an infrastructure cloud.
For cloud providers, this can help enable new service offerings, rather than presenting a barrier to them. And for enterprise data centers, it complements server virtualization to create the other half of the private cloud; it is the flexible, virtualized infrastructure that meshes with the virtualized servers.
All of which is why I believe this is a great investment.
Investors look for the white spaces on the technology horizon, where new products or services can create a richer picture or fill in the gaps. Cloud computing has created a richer picture, giving companies new options for IT. But it’s also created a gap: the need for an infrastructure that’s as flexible as the IT model it supports.
In Xsigo, these investors saw the opportunity to be a part of the cloud revolution, filling a gap that the cloud model created. And in the process, a chance to be a part of the next big thing in the data center.
Cloud Computing Shopping List: 4 Key Ingredients
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Defining the cloud remains a challenge. But we may be getting closer to agreement on the cloud building blocks.
CIO magazine this week provided a list of four ingredients that make up the cloud. Virtual I/O was part of that list. Here’s a quick look at their Fab Four:
** For more on this topic, join our Xsigo/Dell webcast, “How Virtual I/O Lets You Build a Private Cloud with the Vendors of Your Choice,” June 17, 1PM Eastern. Click here to register. **
1. Application Integration
In this context, “integration” is intended to work towards IT as a service, as opposed to simply managing hardware that hosts applications. “Integration” could mean anything, but the article provides a specific example: Enhancements such as administering user identities across multiple applications from a single location can greatly streamline management.
2. Security
A critical element, but one that’s still a work in progress, according to this article. Which partly explains why we see people working towards a private cloud as a first step.
3. Virtual I/O
There are multiple reasons why virtual I/O is essential to the cloud: performance, real-time management, simplicity, etc. But for the IT manager (and Xsigo user) quoted in this article, it was all about scalability.
“When you’re in the dev/test stage, having eight or 10 [Gigabit Ethernet] cables per box is an incredible labeling issue; beyond that, forget it,” says the IT manager. “Moving to virtual I/O is a concept shift—you can’t touch most of the connections anymore—but you’re moving stuff across a high-bandwidth backplane and you can reconfigure the SAN connections or the LANs without having to change cables.”
4. Storage
Storage is an issue because virtual machines require physical storage, just as physical servers do. While the article highlights this as a cost driver, remember that it’s an I/O driver as well. The fact that virtualization is storage intensive implies that it’s I/O intensive as well. Remember, with VMs most of that storage will be external to the server.
While there may not be a single generally-accepted definition of what the cloud looks like once you’ve arrived, there is a lot of value in the conversation about how you get there.
Top Ten Reasons to NOT Buy a Xsigo VP780 I/O Director
Sunday, May 9th, 201010. No one you’ve heard of uses Xsigo. OK, so EMC, VMware, Accenture, Microsoft, Hitachi, Capgemini, and Technicolor all use Xsigo today. But you don’t want to take chances. Nobody does. So don’t take their word for it!
9. InfiniBand is a flash in the pan. Sure InfiniBand has been around for a decade, is available from all leading server vendors, has shipped over 5M ports (at speeds 10G or higher), is embedded in servers from two major vendors (with more coming!), and is growing at 35% per year. But Cisco doesn’t offer IB, so that’s reason enough to doubt it.
8. InfiniBand is just too darn fast. You’ve seen the signs: “Speed kills!” If man was meant to be moving data around at 40Gbps (soon to be 80Gbps!), Cisco would be doing it.
7. Isn’t that InfiniBand stuff just for HPC? InfiniBand is the dominant interconnect in high-performance computing. Why? Because it delivers 4X the bandwidth of 10G Ethernet, at 1/3 the latency, and at less cost. But why would you want high performance in your data center?
6. Who knows where InfiniBand even came from! Wasn’t IB dreamed up in some government lab or something? Well, no. InfiniBand was actually created by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, and Compaq. But what do those guys know about systems?
5. With IB, you’d have a new interconnect in your data center. InfiniBand means you might have to learn something new. Of course FCoE is new, too. But Cisco tells you that’s OK. It’s good to have someone do your thinking for you.
4. Cost savings aren’t a priority. Sure Xsigo can save you 50% to 60% on your connectivity capital costs, but you don’t need the cost savings (and your switch vendor needs the money!).
3. Cisco promised you BIG discounts! Xsigo showed you how to eliminate 70% of your switch ports, and amazingly Cisco came back a day later with a 70% discount, “guaranteed for life.” Wow! That was a coincidence, but you’ll take the discount. Clearly Cisco has your best interests at heart.
2. You like vendor lock-in! Your favorite vendors have been with you for years and they give you great service. As well they should. They know you, and know what they can get away with. They never mentioned that the expression “one throat to choke” can work both ways.
And the TOP reason to not buy a VP780 I/O Director…
1. The new VP560 I/O Director is much cuter! At just 2U height, the new VP560 is sized and priced for smaller deployments. So NOW you have a choice in open, standards-based, enterprise-proven virtual I/O: the VP560 or the VP780. Something you did not have before.
IT Bloggers to Get Hands-On with Xsigo Gear
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Since you’re reading a blog now, you probably rely on a few of your favorite blogs for timely information and analysis. So do we. Which is why we’ve chosen to co-sponsor an event that will enable a group of IT bloggers to get hand-on with Xsigo gear and see first-hand how virtual I/O works.
On November 12-13, Xsigo will co-host Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day event, bringing together influential bloggers and cutting edge innovators in virtualization and storage. It’s our chance to show off how incredibly cool Xsigo’s technology is — and what a major difference it makes in today’s highly virtualized environments. (more…)
Welcome to I/O Unplugged!
Monday, October 19th, 2009Welcome to the new Xsigo blog! We’re new to the blog world, and I’d say a little overdue. Virtual I/O is now a very dynamic space, with multiple vendors and technologies. My aim is to provide an interactive forum to discuss virtual I/O and share knowledge about what virtual I/O is and where it is going.
Why I/O Unplugged?
There are two reasons for the name. First, “unplugged” in the music world means live. And that’s what this is intended to be — a live, frank discussion of technologies, trends, and industry events. (more…)