Data Center

InfiniBand in the Enterprise Data Center - Solving Critical IT Problems

Mellanox’s InfiniBand solutions command the best price-performance-power value proposition when network and storage I/O processing capabilities at 10Gb/s or higher are needed. Data centers can utilize InfiniBand to consolidate I/O in the server farm to a single wire and enable IT managers to deliver significantly higher application service levels, while reducing CAPEX and OPEX related to server and storage I/O infrastructures.

The Cost of Delays in Business Decision Analysis and Transactions Processing

In trading applications, financial institutions can loose huge sums of revenue for split second delays in the execution of a transaction. This is just one example of how time critical execution of application processes can have huge impacts on the competitiveness of Fortune 500 companies. The challenge of maintaining determinism in transaction processing time is being exacerbated by the enormous growth of data volumes that need to be processed and transmitted. The high-bandwidth and low-latency characteristics of InfiniBand is no short of a boon to IT managers facing these growing problems.

• View Voltaire and Wombat White Paper: Low Latency Market Data Solutions
• View Cisco Solution: Cisco VFrame Server Fabric Virtualization Software w/Oracle 10g RAC

The Cost of Multiple I/O Ports and Types per Server

When SAN/NAS solutions are deployed, servers need networking (NIC) and storage (HBA) connectivity. When servers are based on multi-core CPUs, there is need for more I/O resulting in additional I/O ports per server. Server virtualization and use of multi-core CPUs exacerbates the problem further, where servers need as many as four-to-six NICs and two-to-four HBAs. InfiniBand solves the problem – a single I/O adapter can replace multiple NIC and storage adapters, in both native and virtualized environments. And the I/O consolidation benefits can be achieved without compromising on interoperability with existing applications and SAN/LAN/WAN infrastructures. CAPEX and OPEX costs related to server I/O ports are significantly reduced.

• View White Paper: InfiniBand in the Enterprise Data Center
• View White Paper: I/O Virtualization Using Mellanox InfiniBand and Channel I/O Virtualization (CIOV) Technology
• View White Paper: Cut I/O Power and Cost while Boosting Server Performance
• View Presentation: InfiniBand: Enhancing Virtualization ROI With New Data Center Efficiencies
• View Voltaire Solution: Virtualizing the Data Center
• View Cisco Solution: Cisco® VFrame Server Fabric Virtualization Software

The Cost of Power Consumption in Growing Data Centers

High power consumption is a significant pain point for ever-expanding data centers. The industry has seen many recent innovations in the areas of cooler CPUs, server virtualization, blade servers and “stateless” servers where storage resides in SAN or NAS environments. With power consumption as low as 3W per port (10Gb/s), and with its ability to consolidate I/O (save PCI slots) and support high performance and popular SAN/NAS solutions, InfiniBand complements those trends. Through efficient clustering, InfiniBand reduces the number of servers needed for data center applications. Because of these benefits, InfiniBand has been adopted and deployed with all major blade server solutions available in the market.

• Available Market Solution: HP BladeSystem c-Class
• Available Market Solution: Sun Blade 8000
• Available Market Solution: IBM BladeCenter