Emulex Corporation, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced
planned support for high performance Virtual Network Fabrics (VNFs) - virtual
networks built on top of and transparently over traditional networking
infrastructure - accelerating network performance in Microsoft Windows Server
2012 Hyper-V environments. Based on proposed standard Network Virtualization
using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) technology, Windows Server 2012
Hyper-V Network Virtualization reduces the limitations of legacy data center
networks by enabling flexible workload mobility inside the private, public or
hybrid cloud, reducing network reconfiguration from days to minutes. The
forthcoming Emulex Virtual Network Exceleration (VNeX) virtual network
offload technology further accelerates the performance of Windows Server 2012
Hyper-V Network Virtualization by offloading the NVGRE header encapsulation
process from the host to the network controller, providing full native network
performance in a VNF network environment.
"Virtual Network Fabrics are the next step in simplifying and integrating
deployment of hybrid clouds, enabling IT managers to easily move virtual
machines (VMs) within and between their data centers and cloud providers with
high levels of security and flexibility," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice
president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "Working together with
Microsoft on the NVGRE standard development, we can provide faster and more
scalable hybrid clouds with Emulex hardware acceleration VNeX virtual
network offload technology, which can improve network throughput up to 130%,
depending on system configuration in early engineering testing,1 for Windows
Server 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization environments."
VNFs comprise three primary elements, including:
- a data plane running an encapsulation protocol such as NVGRE;
- hardware offloads to improve performance, such as Emulex VNeX;
- control plane software, such as Microsoft System Center.
"Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization enables IP address
mobility, so customers do not need to reconfigure networking attributes in VMs
as they are moved. Emulex VNeX virtual network offload technology enhances the
performance of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization," said Brian
Hillger, Director, Server and Tools Marketing, Microsoft. "At Microsoft Tech-Ed
(June 3-6, in New Orleans), attendees will have the opportunity to evaluate how
Hyper-V Network Virtualization can help reduce complexity, improve security, and
speed VM migrations."
As software-defined networking (SDN) and associated technologies, including
VNF and overlay networking, continue to develop, it is important to understand
what SDN is, what the drivers are and how and where it's being adopted. Emulex
commissioned an Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Book Project: "Why I/O Is
Strategic - Software-defined Networking (SDN)," as part of the "Why I/O Is
Strategic" education series, which outlines these areas and why I/O is strategic
to SDN as a new area of programmability in SDN environments.
"SDN is truly driving a new class of intelligent solutions - and architecture
- that is poised to grow exponentially in the coming years," said Bob Laliberte,
senior analyst, ESG. "With an intelligent I/O system deployed at the edge,
enterprises can leverage the distributed edge processing for more effective I/O
and network virtualization, which is critical for cloud environments with
greater levels of east-west traffic between VMs or physical servers and more
mixed workloads in production environments. The ability to boost CPU
performance, drive efficiency across the data center, and have more control over
the flow of traffic within the data center are key tenets of an intelligent
I/O-based SDN solution."