Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of end-to-end interconnect solutions for servers and storage systems, today announced they will be providing ConnectX-3 Pro 10GbE Network Interface Cards (NICs) with Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) technology to provide consistent, high-performance for the recently announced Microsoft Cloud Platform System. Mellanox’s ConnectX-3 Pro adapter with NVGRE acceleration technology delivers network virtualization at full wire speed without consuming expensive CPU and memory resources, allowing Microsoft Cloud Platform System to deliver all the benefits of network virtualization while still achieving bare metal speed and efficiency.

An Azure-consistent cloud-in-a-box, Microsoft Cloud Platform System enables organizations and service providers to deliver cloud capacity to users. The Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro adapter with NVGRE technology enables the potential for up to 128 nodes to be installed in the system with one to four racks, as well as allows users to achieve complex isolation, security, load balancing and workload optimization more efficiently than in a non-virtualized network environment. To date, Mellanox’s ConnectX-3 Pro is the only NIC that handles the traditional offloads despite the extra encapsulation layer, dramatically improving CPU load.

“More and more enterprises are adopting hybrid cloud technologies such as Microsoft’s Cloud Platform System in order to achieve better utilization of their expensive compute and storage resources,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “The network virtualization accelerator embedded in the ConnectX-3 Pro enables Microsoft Cloud Platform System to automate critical tasks without sacrificing performance or consuming costly server and CPU resources. The result is a dramatic reduction in IT operational expenses.”

“Further adoption of cloud computing remains a priority for many organizations, however the complexity of the deployments and the performance sacrifices that they face hinders many from transitioning more quickly to cloud technology,” said Kushagra Vaid, General Manager of Server Engineering, Microsoft. “Cloud Platform System provides everything needed for a high-performance cloud in a single box, removing the barriers to deployment and management that can quickly become major challenges for IT departments. Mellanox helps deliver the efficiency and agility that is required in today’s data-in-real-time world, with the capacity to scale to the expectations of tomorrow.”