Comments on: Next Up: I/O Virtualization? http://gigaom.com/2008/02/28/next-up-io-virtualization/ Tracking the Internet Evolution Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:46:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU hourly 1 By: Kennyo http://gigaom.com/2008/02/28/next-up-io-virtualization/#comment-863758 Kennyo Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:52:03 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=11654#comment-863758 <p>The very cool part of I/O virtualization isn't the fact that it interoperates with all of the other (redundant?) transfer mechanisms, or that it makes it "easy to connect the VM" to different resources... although that's part of it.</p> <p>The thing that's valueable is that when one provisions a piece of software to a piece of hardware (whether-or-not it's been virtualized) one can provision a "virtual NIC" at the same time.</p> <p>So picture the future: software, I/O, and presumably storage, can be allocated on-the-fly as compute demands dictate. Very much of an automated "cloud" scenario.</p> The very cool part of I/O virtualization isn’t the fact that it interoperates with all of the other (redundant?) transfer mechanisms, or that it makes it “easy to connect the VM” to different resources… although that’s part of it.

The thing that’s valueable is that when one provisions a piece of software to a piece of hardware (whether-or-not it’s been virtualized) one can provision a “virtual NIC” at the same time.

So picture the future: software, I/O, and presumably storage, can be allocated on-the-fly as compute demands dictate. Very much of an automated “cloud” scenario.

]]> By: Richard http://gigaom.com/2008/02/28/next-up-io-virtualization/#comment-863731 Richard Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:14:29 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=11654#comment-863731 <p>The summary in 2nd paragraph is confusing, and makes it sounds as if this is something like a SAN technology - as far as I can tell from the links, this is simply a way for multiple PCI Express cards in a single system to be allocated to separate virtual machines. The I/O virtualization part presumably makes it easy to connect a VM to different I/O resources, although SANs already do that so it's hard to see the value of this.</p> The summary in 2nd paragraph is confusing, and makes it sounds as if this is something like a SAN technology - as far as I can tell from the links, this is simply a way for multiple PCI Express cards in a single system to be allocated to separate virtual machines. The I/O virtualization part presumably makes it easy to connect a VM to different I/O resources, although SANs already do that so it’s hard to see the value of this.

]]> By: GaryO http://gigaom.com/2008/02/28/next-up-io-virtualization/#comment-863581 GaryO Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:32:55 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=11654#comment-863581 <p>Great to see GigaOm covering more data center infrastructure!</p> <p>In addition to the folks mentioned delivering sophisticated path management, there are also companies trying to minimize the impact of application I/O requests by applying memory at the server, network, and storage layers, and delivering a "virtual I/O" response.</p> <p>But more importantly, how the heck did we go from: 1. We have Ethernet to 2. We have Ethernet and Fibre Channel to 3. We have Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InifiniBand to 4. We can put everything back on 10Gig Ethernet.</p> <p>Is it just me, or does this seem like we could have saved a few billion dollars over the last few years and skipped a couple of steps?</p> Great to see GigaOm covering more data center infrastructure!

In addition to the folks mentioned delivering sophisticated path management, there are also companies trying to minimize the impact of application I/O requests by applying memory at the server, network, and storage layers, and delivering a “virtual I/O” response.

But more importantly, how the heck did we go from:
1. We have Ethernet to
2. We have Ethernet and Fibre Channel to
3. We have Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InifiniBand to
4. We can put everything back on 10Gig Ethernet.

Is it just me, or does this seem like we could have saved a few billion dollars over the last few years and skipped a couple of steps?

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