Analysis

posted on 12 February 2008 07:45

Xsigo Systems Inc. a Sunnyvale, CA , start-up, sells the VP780 I/O Director which provides data centre virtualisation and consolidates server connectivity. As part of this it renders storage network (SAN) host bus adapters (HBAs) redundant. That sounds good. Is it a real prospect?

The use of virtualising directors is claimed to reduce cabling, eliminate re-wiring and speed server provisioning.

Both the company and its I/O Director were officially launched at VMworld last year. It is estimated that large data centres can lower their server-related operational expenses by up to 80%, cut capital costs by 50%, and use 70% less cabling by using Xsigo’s technology.

With the I/O Director, IT managers can provision I/O resources on-the-fly without disrupting network and storage configurations, and without physically entering the data centre. Xsigo consolidates the I/O infrastructure and replaces physical network and storage interfaces (NICs and HBAs) with virtual resources that are remotely manageable from a single console. The I/O Director, offers reduced capital costs, greater management simplicity, and support for open standards.

Steven Haley, Xsigo’s president and COO, said: “Our solution is in growing demand as more companies recognise the efficiency, security, and agility benefits that virtual I/O delivers.”

The Technology
We have virtual servers and we have various forms of storage virtualisation with multiple arrays or servers with direct-attached storage (DAS) being able to be presented as single logical pools of blocks or files. We can even have a SAN presented as a ready-packaged virtual machine from either DataCore or Left Hand Networks.

Both Brocade and Cisco are building data centre switches to cope with the expanded I/O needs in a data centre with hundreds if not thousands of virtual servers and petabytes of virtualised storage. What can a startup achieve here?

The 4U–high 4 Xsigo director sits on an Ethernet network. It has a 10Gbit/s InfiniBand links to individual X86 servers with an interface card there. A single 10Gb server connection replaces multiple cables and can be easily allocated to optimize both storage and networking data delivery. XSigo says customers can:-

- Migrate connectivity among servers transparently
- Deliver 10Gb/s bandwidth to each server
- Integrate with existing management frameworks

The focus is on server connectivity and the company says the I/O Director replaces fixed resources (HBAs and NICs) with easily managed virtual resources (virtual NICs and virtual HBAs) that can be deployed in seconds. Changing a server’s connectivity becomes a 30 second task that can be accomplished from anywhere. Moving connectivity from one server to another can also be done in 30 seconds, with no re-cabling.

XSigo states that the I/O Director can have up to 15 I/O modules. Available I/O modules include:

- 4x 1Gb Ethernet with up to 64 gigabit Ethernet NICs
- 10Gb Ethernet with up to 128 Ethernet NICs
- 4G Fibre Channel for linking to back-end SAN storage Has 64 virtual HBAs.
- InfiniBand
- SSL offload module for encryption tasks.

Up to 120 servers can be connected to an individual I/O director though the use of six expansion switches.

A vNIC (virtual network interface) resides in the server and appears to the server and the network exactly as a physical NIC. A vNIC can be created on the fly without a server reboot and can be migrated among physical servers. The MAC address remains persistent through a migration, eliminating the need for network re-mapping. Up to 32 vNICs may be created per server.

A vHBA (virtual storage adapter) resides in the server and appears to servers and storage exactly as a physical Fibre Channel HBA. A vHBA can be created on the fly without a server reboot and can be migrated among physical servers. The WWN remains persistent through a migration, eliminating the need for network re-mapping. Up to 32 vHBAs may be created per server.

An Xsigo driver resides on each server. It creates virtual NICs and HBAs under the control of the Xsigo I/O Director, replacing the standard NIC and HBA drivers.

The virtual NICS and HBAS look like real ones to servers and also to the SAN resource management software. They can be discovered just like physical interfaces.

Xsigo states that each virtual Ethernet interface has its own rich set of QoS attributes that manage Shaper and Policer CIR and PIR traffic controls. Applications can be guaranteed predictable service levels for all ingress and egress traffic. QoS parameters can be changed dynamically, as dictated by business and policy requirements.

The director can be managed remotely, with a lights-out data centre environment, and has an open API for use by other management software, as well as a GUI.

What we don’t have is 8Gbit/s FC support but that is only just coming in and can readily be added, it being just an interface card.

The Xsigo product looks suited to entry-level and medium-sized data centres. It’s API interface suggests that VMware and other virtual server environments could link to it for automatic server I/O provisioning.

It remains to be seen how it would interface to an existing FC SAN infrastructure with its own switches and directors. That would seem to be a feature of larger data centres whereas the Xsigo product is aimed at providing relatively simple SAN resources to relatively simple server applications. It isn’t a SAN director in the Brocade or Cisco sense with lots of sophisticated features.

Customer Win
Infoplex Pty Ltd., an IT Managed Service Provider based in Australia, has bought six Xsigo VP 780 I/O Directors that will be installed and operational in its Sydney and Melbourne data centres by the end of the year.

Infoplex offers ‘on demand’ storage capabilities, disaster recovery, shared and dedicated hosting, collocation services, and software as a service. It will use these I/O Directors to consolidate server connectivity in its data centres, resulting in lower data centre costs for its application hosting business. Future plans include Xsigo deployments at Infoplex data centres in Hong Kong and Brisbane .

Sean Kaye, Infoplex’s MD, said: “Xsigo allows us to be more efficient and responsive at the same time. Because we operate data centres across two continents, our objective is to remotely manage all aspects of operation, including connectivity. With Xsigo’s I/O virtualisation technology, we can reduce cabling by 70%, eliminate re-wiring, and provision servers in half the time.”

Infoplex has also become a reseller of the Xsigo I/O Director product family and will sell Xsigo products directly to managed service providers and enterprise business customers throughout the region.