NextIO: Leading Provider of Next Generation I/O Solutions

Today's enterprise data center managers are tasked with creating and maintaining the most demanding IT environments with limited capital and human resources. This challenge is further amplified with the complexities of new technologies, heterogeneous environments and rising costs. The NextIO Adaptive Connect™ solution tackles the complexity, cost and performance issues present in today's IT infrastructure, delivering essential business benefits to the Enterprise Data Center.

Ease of Deployment

Key to creating business efficiency is to ensure cutting edge technology is up and available to stakeholders as quickly as possible. NextIO's Adaptive Connect is a unique and non-disruptive technology consolidating I/O resources by using standard features available in current servers. By leveraging PCI Express, NextIO can take advantage of 12 plus years of operating system, software, and application development. There are no new drivers to load on servers and data center storage, networking, and application qualifications are completely maintained. Current security and operational models are also observed within the NextIO infrastructure, so there is no need to be locked into a proprietary system, and no paradigm changes are needed to achieve the full benefits of I/O virtualization.

With NextIO, enterprise data centers can choose the best storage options at deployment time, e.g. Fibre Channel or SAS, while retaining the option for new technologies in the future, e.g. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). The cost and effort of an upgrade is simply plugging in a single card and mapping the server to that connection, instead of a complete infrastructure change. The same holds true for networking options, the transition from 1Gb to 10Gb Ethernet can be done easily and cost effectively without a fork-lift upgrade of the infrastructure.. This is the lowest cost, least disruptive way to manage IT infrastructure.

Enabling Server Virtualization

In the last few years, virtual machines have returned to the enterprise data center. Virtual machines in greater numbers are being deployed in production environments, having already become pervasive in development environments. However, Virtual Machines are not without their challenges. Many challenges are due to the fact that I/O resources are tied to a physical server. This constrains the I/O throughput of the host when multiple virtual machines reside on it, competing for I/O resources. Other challenges include management and maintenance, security, limitation on migration, and limited I/O options.

NextIO's Adaptive Connect platform is the only solution that supports I/O Virtualization in any server form factor, rack or blade, for ANY I/O technology. The Adaptive Connect platform virtualizes and manages the I/O subsystem for a pool of servers. It is fully compatible with virtual machine solutions in the market today. The NextIO solution provides greater flexibility and ease of use of virtual machines in production by virtualizing storage, network, video, WAN connectivity for servers. It delivers improved performance with the ability to deliver bandwidth on demand for virtual machine operation and migration. By having a pool of I/O resources, I/O end-points can be redeployed to any physical server as the virtual machine and application are migrated from one physical machine to another. With the growing and changing demands on enterprise data centers and the continual evolution of technology, only the NextIO approach, leveraging PCI Express, truly enables I/O virtualization across the entire data center.

Lower TCO

While virtualization has greatly reduced the inherent costs of years of hardware buildup, the combination of I/O consolidation and virtualization with NextIO's Adaptive Connect further shrinks capital expenditures by reducing the infrastructure needed to provide for current and future service levels. Capital outlays decrease as each server costs less to put into service, without the need for dedicated adapters, cables, and switch ports. Accompanying this simplification in computing infrastructure, NextIO solutions can produce a dramatic drop in operational maintenance costs. Failover, load balancing, new installation, and new technology deployments can all be done with software mapping or remapping rather labor intensive re-cabling and reconfiguration. The NextIO Adaptive Connect platform separates CPU from I/O so that each may be added or upgraded separately. Adaptive Connect delivers unprecedented capabilities in scalability, with I/O and server resources that can be scaled independently for potential 50-70% savings in capital, power, and space.

Affordable Business Continuity

The NextIO Adaptive Connect platform enables users to reduce unnecessary servers, adapters, switch ports, and software components. A reduction in infrastructure leads to greater reliability. With virtualization capabilities, users get I/O resource capacity on demand. This delivers greater availability. An increase in enterprise SAN usage has led to a corresponding rise in complexity in setting up the correct security models for partitioning the SAN. This has lead to a corresponding decrease in flexibility. The NextIO solution is fully configurable providing flexible and reliable control of network and storage bandwidth. It interjects dynamic configuration for storage while maintaining all security paradigms of the current environment.

Increased Productivity with Simplified Management

Applications have different needs for I/O resources. For example, a web server usually requires fewer I/O resources than that of a production database. The NextIO solution consolidates I/O needs, rules and access into a single platform, offering system administrators a convenient, single location for monitoring and configuring ALL I/O needs for ALL attached servers.

NextIO management software enforces business needs which ensure resources are always available where they are needed most. The Adaptive Connect platform provides guaranteed quality of service on storage and network bandwidth, with fine-grained control using time- and event-based triggers. Thus, an administrator can set up an automated policy for the production database to utilize more of the available network bandwidth than the web server.