Alacritech Inc., the leader of innovative data-delivery technology, today announced the industry's first Scalable Network 10Gb optical and copper Ethernet Accelerators designed to assist IT administrators in optimizing data center server utilization. Alacritech announced the SEN3001EF PCI-e fiber SNA and the SEN3001ET PCI-e copper SNA. The addition of Alacritech's 10GbE Scalable Network Accelerators (SNAs) to its product family gives users a single adapter that offers a NIC with stateless offload support and Dynamic TOE functionality while providing increased server utilization, optimization and performance as it also controls power and cooling costs.
Alacritech's innovative Dynamic TCP Offload technology is natively integrated with Microsoft's TCP Chimney Offload architecture and supports Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Stateless offloads are offered through the 10GbE SNA's NIC feature and will be supported under Linux, OpenSolaris, Windows and Mac OS X. In addition, Alacritech's 10GbE SNAs will provide Dynamic TOE support for Hyper-V when Microsoft makes its next major Windows 2008 release available. The 10GbE SNA will also support VMware ESX, including NetQueue, in mid 2009.
As GbE permeates the edge of the enterprise, the need to provide sufficient bandwidth to clients and media-rich applications increases and makes it essential for data centers to begin migrating to 10GbE at the core. In addition, edge clients as well as outside users communicating across the WAN are creating large volumes of rich content that is being stored and forwarded by data centers. As such, more servers are allocating more cycles to moving content rather than processing it. Unfortunately, server and processor designs historically have not been optimized for moving data. Incorporating an Alacritech GbE or 10GbE SNA optimizes a server to move data and operate more efficiently.
"The availability of a multi-purpose accelerator is very well-timed," said BobLaliberte, analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Data center administrators are actively optimizing server utilization, so the ability to leverage a versatile network adapter that can address a wide range of application I/O requirements, deliver targeted performance and support lean computing should be an attractive option to many. And now that customers can get multi-purpose 10GbE accelerators at roughly the same price as a standard 10GbE NIC,it just makes sense that they would take advantage of it."
Alacritech's 10GbE SNA is built to move data efficiently, maximizing throughput and minimizing latency. Compared to competitive products, the 10GbE SNA allows administrators to configure servers with fewer processors while delivering targeted performance and utilization and consuming 30 percent less power. The 10GbE SNA enables servers to support more clients, increasing their useful lifespan and sparing IT departments the burden of buying, installing and maintaining additional servers to handle the workload.
"Alacritech has long been recognized as one of the pioneers of TOE technology and by providing stateless NIC offload they are expanding their reach," said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst, The Linley Group. "And, their TCP Chimney design increases efficiency while lowering energy costs -- of which customers who are moving small block iSCSI traffic, in addition to large block traffic with multiple applications can take advantage."
Alacritech's 10GbE SNA with Dynamic TOE and NIC support is ideal for large block size applications including backup, SQL logging, media streaming, web server, video-on-demand, DSS and OS paging. In addition, the 10GbE SNA increases performance for small block size applications including webserver logging, exchange/email and file servers.