Xsigo Systems, the technology leader in I/O virtualization, announced today that PrimaCloud, a leading managed cloud computing services provider, has deployed the Xsigo I/O Director as the foundation of its new service offering. The virtual I/O architecture allows customers to provision a complete virtual private data center in just five minutes, a task that would otherwise require days or weeks. With Xsigo, PrimaCloud maintains 99.99% uptime at 50% less cost and in 85% less physical data center space than would otherwise be possible. Capital and operational cost savings enabled by Xsigo virtual I/O are expected to exceed $1 million in the company's first year of operation.

"The challenge of a virtual private data center service is to deliver enterprise-class performance and uptime, while offering nearly infinite configuration flexibility and competitive pricing," said David Durkee, CEO of PrimaCloud. "To meet this challenge, we evaluated the technology options, including 10Gig Ethernet and FCoE, and concluded that only Xsigo met our needs. With Xsigo virtual I/O, we now have a highly agile infrastructure that lets us deliver more capability, in less space, and with fewer management resources. As a result, we can offer our customers an appreciably better service at lower cost."

Xsigo virtual I/O allowed PrimaCloud to deploy a fault-tolerant architecture based on highly-dense, quad server systems that package 48 processing cores within a compact 2U high chassis, reducing data center space requirements by 85% compared with conventional 4U high servers. By providing 40 Gb of bandwidth to each server while consuming only two PCI slots, Xsigo virtual I/O allowed PrimaCloud to deliver superior performance from more than 200 virtual machines per 2U system, a compute density that is believed to be the industry's highest.

"Our customers expect to take a data center Visio diagram and make it real within minutes," Durkee continued. "We could not have done this without the rapid scalability and management flexibility that Xsigo enables. Virtual I/O allowed us to realize the 'virtual' part of the on-demand virtual private data center."

Xsigo virtual I/O was deployed in conjunction with VMware ESX software and Enigmatec's EMS cross-platform policy-based automation solution. The combination allows configuration changes to be completed entirely in software -- either manually or automatically -- eliminating the need to visit the data center. When adding physical server resources, installation only requires connecting two I/O cables, reducing configuration time by 90%.

"To fulfill the promise of cloud computing, service providers such as PrimaCloud need data center solutions that let them drive down operations costs while delivering superior performance and flexibility," said Lloyd Carney, CEO of Xsigo Systems. "With any-to-any connectivity and eight times the density of traditional I/O, Xsigo virtual I/O delivers the performance, density, and agility required to increase resource utilization and enable the next-generation data center."