Solarflare Communications, the leader in standards-compliant 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) silicon, announced today Broadband-Testing’s performance findings of Solarflare’s Solarstorm SFC4000E vNIC 10GbE controller. Respected as Europe’s leading independent network testing facility and consultancy organization, Broadband-Testing conducted several intensive real-world tests to ensure Solarflare’s controller yields optimal performance while maintaining reliability.

Data collected across several configurations and scenarios revealed Solarstorm achieves line-rate in a variety of server operating systems, including Windows® Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Redhat Enterprise Linux®. Once line-rate was achieved and maintained, there were still ample processing resources on the server, meaning Solarstorm sustained 10 Gigabit speeds without depleting server resources available for application processing. Solarstorm also performed at line-rate speeds in virtualized environments with both VMware and Xen, surpassing previously-published performance figures. Lastly, the controller yielded a 300 percent improvement in iSCSI environments with data digest enabled.

IT and data center managers need line-rate 10GbE to address the increasing number of virtualized applications consolidated on a smaller number of servers. “Customers are looking for reliable, high-performance solutions for their networks,” said Bruce Tolley, vice president of marketing at Solarflare. “The results from Broadband-Testing confirm that our 10GbE technology performs at levels demanded by our customers. We’re pleased with the outcome, because it further supports our push to drive the widespread adoption of 10GbE.”

“Utilizing our extensive test facilities, we were able to measure just how efficiently Solarstorm addresses the market demands faced by data centers today,” said Steve Broadhead, founder and director, Broadband-Testing Labs. “The tests conclude that the Solarstorm controller provides industry-leading performance in a wide-variety of real-world application environments. Now, IT managers looking to adopt 10GbE have data-driven results proving Solarstorm delivers cost-effective, high-performing technology to sustain a rich mix of contemporary applications.”

The testing on Solarflare’s Solarstorm controller occurred in April 2008. For additional information from the full Broadband-Testing report, please visit http://www.solarflare.com/technology/tech_papers.htm.