NextIO is extending a price reduction to Federal and Educational institutions.  The method is simple – any vCORE Express 2075 or vCORE Express Lite 2075 orders placed before April 24 for customers in these two areas are eligible for the discounted pricing.  The discounts are as much as $1000 per vCore.

Contact NextIO representatives at channels@nextio.com or your local partner for more information.

Thanks to Gus Chavira and the VMUG for hosting another successful Austin VMUG meeting, this time a much more ambitious User Conference.  The VMware User Group has now posted presentations and documents from the event for anyone to download and share.  Content includes both vendor presentations and VMware updates and best practices, including:

• Architecting and Building a Secure and Compliant Virtual Infrastructure and Private Cloud
• Performance and Analytics Best Practices – Leveraging vCenter Operations
• Accelerate VDI success with Dell EqualLogic and VMware View
• ESXi 5.0 Best Practices
• Troubleshooting Storage Performance
• VCDX Panel Defense Workshop
• vSphere Distributed Switch Deployments
• etc

Definitely some good stuff here!  Check it out at the VMUG website.

Join your fellow VMware users at this free, full-day event for in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations, exhibits, and networking opportunities. Come to South Florida to meet with your peers and industry experts to discuss virtualization trends, best practices, and the latest technology!

NextIO will have the vNET I/O Maestro on display and available for hands-on interaction.  The vNet simplifies data center management while increasing performance and flexibility with any-to-any connectivity across servers, network, and storage.  Shrink hardware footprint and complexity by eliminating 75% of the cards, cables and leaf switches, while providing 20 Gbps bandwidth to each server for increased application performance.  Come by the booth and we can show you how to save 50% over traditional architecture.

Visit the South Florida VMUG User Conference event page to reserve your place at this event now.  Take advantage of these educational and networking opportunities:

• 8 VMware educational sessions
• 12 partner education tracks
• Exhibitor area with VMware partners
• EMC Labs
• Complimentary breakfast and lunch

Registration is complimentary, so register today!

NextIO and Solutions II to Present New I/O Virtualization Solution at Austin VMUG 3/15.

Come visit NextIO at the Solutions II booth at the Austin VMUG on March 15 as we talk about our new IO virtualization solution, the vNET I/O Maestro. The vNET I/O Maestro is a cost effective way to deploy a fat pipe to servers, a 20 Gbps connection supporting both Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections, and is ideal for projects such as 10GbE uplift or SAN roll-outs. Virtualization and cloud deployments move the bottleneck from the compute resources (CPU and memory) to the I/O layer – NextIO eliminates the I/O bottleneck. The vNET I/O Maestro allows IT managers to connect any server to any I/O resource with the click of a mouse, share physical resources among servers within the rack, and dynamically deploy or reallocate resources to servers as workload demand changes. With fewer adapters, leaf switches and cables, vNET delivers efficiencies which reduces CapEx by up to 40% and OpEx by up to 60%.

NextIO is proud to team up with Solutions II as a key integration partner for the vNET I/O Maestro. The VMUG User Conference will be held from 8 am to 5 pm at the Hyatt Regency Austin located at 208 Barton Springs Rd, Austin, Texas.  Register for free here.

About Solutions II

Solutions II is nationally recognized for their world class innovation in virtualization, business continuance and storage optimization. Solutions II assists Clients in leveraging technologies and services to drive the cost out of IT. Solutions II’s commitment to bringing best-of-breed solutions to Clients includes a professional services practice dedicated to increasing customer service levels and decreasing the time and support required for implementations to keep their clients “Performing Ahead of the Curve”. For more information, please visit  www.Solutions-ii.com.

Philip Sellers, who writes the Tech Talk blog, recently wrote an in-depth review of the NextIO vNET Maestro, our new top-of-rack IO virtualization solution.  Philip is a systems administrator for America’s largest telephone cooperative, Horry Telephone Cooperative, in Conway, SC.  His primary focus is on Microsoft operating systems and infrastructure, VMware virtualization, and blade servers for the co-op.

From his post:

Advantages:  The advantages that I see with the technology are very similar to the benefits I initially show with HP Virtual Connect, although a little different since it is with more industry standard hardware.  Some of the advantages include:

• Reduced need of ports for Fiber Channel and Network, which is really useful when few applications can consume the capacity of an 8Gb fiber channel port or a 10Gb Ethernet port.   As with virtualization in its first phase which sought to increase utilization of processor and memory in hosts, this technology can be used to increase utilization of under-utilized connectivity.
• Less costly upgrades to the newest technology allowed by adding a single PCI card of a specific technology and then sharing the new features to the backend rack mount systems.
• Server to server traffic not interacting with systems outside of the vNet’s domain does not need to leave the vNet device and can travel between systems at PCIe native speeds.
• Very intuitive and easy to learn interface to provision interfaces to backend nodes.
• The special PCI riser cards are pass-through modules with no firmware or intelligence to patch and maintain.
• Interconnect cards are industry standard PCI cards – nothing special or proprietary.
• PCI traffic passes through the vNet unit even without the management module in service, meaning that a firmware upgrade or other outage in the module would not cause downtime.

You can check out the entire post here for more detail:

http://tech.philipsellers.com/2011/11/30/nextio-releases-the-vnet-io-maestro-a-san-and-network-convergence-device/

Thanks for the review Philip!

I/O Virtualization provides agility to solve tough virtualization projects

In 2011, IT departments have been asked to continually do more with less:  deploy on-demand clouds and enterprise wide VDI, virtualize mission critical applications, upgrade to 10GbE, and implement ever more complex tiered storage solutions.  At the same time, IT budgets have remained flat or even decreased.  Architects are realizing that current hardware designs are inefficient at deploying I/O resources to keep up with the agility and reliability required for virtual desktop and cloud deployments.  Current designs are both expensive (have you priced a 10GbE uplift lately?!?) and inflexible.  Much like server virtualization 8 to 10 years ago, I/O virtualization is a disruptive technology that improves reliability, consolidation, and flexibility, while ultimately lowering IT costs.

What do I expect with regards to I/O virtualization in 2012?  Read on:

I/O virtualization provides the key to cloud agility

I think we can agree that for many enterprises the easy stuff has been virtualized.  Now admins are tackling much harder problems:

• Virtualizing database servers and mission critical and high performance apps
• VDI, which has been evaluated to death over the last 3 to 4 years, must now be deployed in production. End users are sensitive to the performance of their desktop apps and IT staff will hear about any deficiencies.
• Internal customers are no longer satisfied with the “one size fits all” VM templates deployed in the cloud – don’t box me in!

To keep up, IT staff will have no choice but to invest heavily in their current architectures or look to new technologies such as I/O virtualization.

Much like server architecture before virtualization, currently I/O resources are inefficiently deployed, inflexible, and expensive, generally with a lot of excess capacity.  I/O virtualization is the separation of I/O (Ethernet, Fiber Channel, FCoE, etc.) from the compute resources (CPU and Memory) so that the I/O resources can be consolidated, managed, and deployed most effectively.

I/O virtualization provides both cost savings and flexibility, with the agility to match I/O resources to workload requirements with the same ease as provisioning servers.  The hardware limitation of the host is removed so that staff can easily scale I/O up or down according to the VM workload (as well as bill customers for the I/O resources consumed).  In addition, GPUs and SSDs can be added for specific high demand workloads.

Eliminate vendor lock-in and reduce hardware costs

Proprietary architectures such as blade chassis’ or interconnect fabric can be very effective for certain virtualization projects, but that effectiveness comes at a price.  Many enterprises will be looking for ways to match the flexibility of their hardware architecture to the flexibility of their cloud services.  This includes technologies that scale up easily and cheaply, accommodate a variety of vendors, and do not force them to make long term bets on the viability of certain architectures to meet their processing needs 4 or 5 years out.

While third party cloud providers are stepping in to provide scalable resources on an as-needed basis, I/O virtualization provides much needed flexibility and cost savings for dedicated environments.  I/O virtualization is based on industry standards such as PCIe so that it can accommodate compute nodes from a variety of vendors – pick your server according to availability, cost, and performance, not on a blade chassis purchased years ago.  IT staff can easily deploy new technologies to take advantage of cost savings or performance improvements.  I/O virtualization provides a cost effective way to deploy 10GbE or Fiber Channel in the datacenter.

In 2012, IOV will help enterprises tackle some of their more difficult virtualization projects.

As we deal with different kinds of data in ever-growing amounts, data center management becomes more complicated—and expensive. In multi-fabric data centers, the costs only escalate with each new fabric type. A “divide and conquer” philosophy may seem like the best way to manage a complex environment, but if you’re dividing your staff into specialized teams such as Local Area Network (LAN) administrators, Storage Area Network (SAN) administrators and server administrators, you’re probably noticing inefficiencies. Duplicating functions between the teams and transitioning tasks from one group to another often results in delays and high operational expenditures (OpEx).

High OpEx is only half of the challenge when you add in the capital expenditures (CapEx) of 10GbE and Fibre Channel adapters inside the rack. With Ethernet Network Interface Cards, Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and corresponding switches, the cost per server could reach as high as $3,000. Expenses like this can limit growth whether you are a managed service provider whose survival depends on standing up servers quickly or you are an enterprise that requires a large, and growing, data center.

Most managers would probably agree that simplicity is the key to reducing CapEx and OpEx in multi-fabric data centers, but how can you reign in complexity without losing the sophisticated capability you need? Combining I/O devices and adding virtual functionality could be a good solution to consider. You can consolidate each server’s Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections by using a single PCI Express (PCIe) cable attached to an appliance that sits at the top of the rack. A standard rack configuration would consist of two PCIe cables from each server set up in redundant connections to two top-of-rack appliances.

This I/O consolidation approach essentially creates shared pools of I/O resources so you need fewer physical adapters, leaf switches and cables. It also requires the same setup and provisioning skill sets regardless of the fabric type allowing you to forego dedicated teams. Anyone on your staff can work on any fabric. Managing multiple fabrics becomes much easier from a staffing perspective and more cost effective. You can stand up more servers in less time and manage them efficiently.

By: Mike Heumman

In the sales and marketing world, product launches happen frequently.  NextIO recently launched the vNET I/O Maestro network consolidation appliance.  vNET represents the culmination of NextIO’s accomplishments as a company – it is the concept and the product that the company was founded around.  The idea was simple – rather than put half a dozen expensive I/O cards in each and every server (most of which would only be utilized some of the time), datacenter administrators could build a pool of I/O resources that would be shared across servers.  This concept held the promise of both CAPEX and OPEX savings for datacenters by reducing the complexity of the I/O infrastructure.  More importantly, it opened up the possibility that server I/O could be reconfigured on the fly, allowing I/O resources to be added without ever opening up a server.

As the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for NextIO, my job is to find markets for our products, and then serve the needs of our customers.  My team and I have spent the last six months installing vNETs in Early Adopter (EA) customers – people who don’t mind blazing the trail to get early competitive advantages over others in their markets.  This can be a very challenging assignment for startups – most enterprise customers are very conservative in adopting new technologies.  However, our experience with the vNET EA program has been significantly different than that, primarily because no one likes the current “system” of overprovisioning servers so you don’t have to open them up for 3 years.  While the current approach saves on OPEX by eliminating server “touches”, it exacts a high penalty on the CAPEX side, adding 20%-40% to the price of a server.  Worse yet, it has a huge impact on the complexity of datacenter fabrics by increasing the number of switches and cables by 2X to 3X.  The savings seen by one customer are shown below – as you can see they are significant.

By and large, most potential customers were very enthusiastic to simplify their lives in this area.  We have been able to line up nearly two dozen early adopter customers worldwide, only limited by the number of evaluation systems we had to move between customers.

Which brings us back to the vNET launch.  Today, I am at the IPExpo in London, where we are showing vNET I/O Maestro.  Over the following two weeks, I will be meeting with channel partners and large customers in Europe, followed by the US Cloud Expo in Santa Clara, CA the week of November 7^th.  We are also working on launch events in Japan and other parts of Asia during December and January.  We will also be posting several of our success stories and testimonial videos on our website over the next month or so.  In all of these events, the message is the same: let us help you save money while increasing your capabilities and providing you with a competitive advantage.  If this sounds interesting to you, please contact us at vNET@NextIO.com and we will be happy to help you save money also!

I’m very excited to officially kick off our new blog with breaking news from NextIO. Today, we launched the newest addition to our v-Series I/O consolidation solutions, the vNET I/O Maestro.  vNET I/O Maestro is a top of rack appliance that allows servers to share I/O resources such as Fibre channel, 10Gb Ethernet, SAS, and many other I/O resources.  The Maestro lowers cost as well as simplifies the deployment and management of complex server I/O by eliminating the need for dedicated I/O cards in servers, and it significantly reduces the number of leaf switches and cables in datacenter racks.

Two things make the vNET I/O Maestro unique among I/O consolidation devices;

1) vNET is based on industry standard PCI Express (PCIe) switching technology which is built into every server and gives 40Gig of I/O connectivity FOR FREE to every device.

2) vNET can support any PCIe device out there, from legacy devise to  the latest and greatest technology offered.  For devices that implement the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) single-root I/O virtualization or multiple root I/O virtualization standards, vNET can share the devices across servers.  The other unique quality of the vNET I/O Maestro is that it is completely transparent to the server, operating system, applications, and the network.  This means that it can be dropped into existing datacenters without requiring changes to governance policies.  The net result is that vNET provides all of the positives of shared I/O without requiring proprietary drivers or changes to customers’ practices.

What impact will vNET have for datacenter users?  The first is that it will remove layers of cost and complexity associated with multi-fabric deployments – imagine eliminating bundles of cables and switches that you have to manage in your datacenter today. The second is that the I/O resources can be added to a server, or reassigned from one server to another with the click of a mouse.  Whereas, adding a 10Gb Ethernet card to a server today requires customers to open up the server, add a card, and then map it into the network, the vNET I/O Maestro can add a virtual resource with the click of a mouse, and with zero server downtime.
As you might imagine, customers are excited. And it’s not hard to see why when they learn that by benefiting from simpler data center management, they also save up to 40% on CapEx costs. Even better, customers can see up to 60% savings on OpEx costs, as well. vNET I/O Maestro helps to reduce costs associated with personnel, power and cooling. Think of all the extra servers and hardware that were needed prior to vNET—now, customers won’t have as many heat-producing devices to cool down.

NextIO was founded around the vision of any-to-any connectivity. Our v-Series data center consolidation products maximize the value, productivity and efficiencies of complex I/O.  With vNET I/O Maestro, we have expanded upon our vision to bring new levels of efficiency to data center professionals everywhere.  We’re starting our worldwide launch this week, so stay tuned for news and announcements when we’re in each area. If you find us in your area and would like meet and see vNET I/O Maestro in action, drop us a line at vnet@nextio.com and we would love to hear from you.

Have questions? Leave a comment and we’ll start a discussion!