Neterion, Inc., an industry leader in 10 GB Ethernet (10GbE) adapters for server and storage environments and a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, has announced that drivers for its Xframe family of adapters, which are fully supported by VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i, deliver breakthrough I/O performance compared to previous versions of VMware software.

The drivers are native or included in the box with VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i. These versions of VMware ESX Server are the first versions of the virtualization software to support 10 GbE and they include a host of new features for data center management.

A key new feature in VMware ESX Server 3.5 is the NetQueue API, which optimizes high-speed networking in virtualized server and storage environments. Neterion is the first vendor to qualify a driver for native support of NetQueue, which is a major factor in improving throughput performance. NetQueue-enabled VMware ESX Server 3.5 with the Neterion 10 GbE adapters have demonstrated near line-rate throughput on VMware virtual machines. With up to 9.8 Gbps throughput, Neterion has shown performance up to four times that of previous versions of VMware ESX Server.

In addition to providing near line-rate throughput, the Neterion 10 GbE adapters also transparently support VMware VMotion, which allows the easy movement of virtual machines from one physical server to another with no downtime for end users. VMware VMotion keeps IT environments up and running, providing unprecedented flexibility and availability to meet the increasing demands on the data center.

"Neterion's NetQueue-enabled 10 GbE drivers for VMware ESX Server 3.5 can substantially boost the network performance of virtualized environments," said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware. "Customers can now run even more network-intensive workloads on each virtual machine without sacrificing application performance."

Neterion previously demonstrated these capabilities at VMworld 2007 last September in San Francisco and did so again in February at VMworld Europe in Cannes, France. The demo featured an IBM System x3850 server connected to a client server running the Chariot benchmark. When the benchmark is run on the System x3850 server in native or non-virtualized mode, the Neterion 10 GbE adapter shows throughput of up to 9.9 Gbps. In the virtualized mode with three virtual machines running on the System x3850, the Neterion adapter shows throughput of 9.8 Gbps.

"We designed virtualization capabilities in our 10 Gigabit Ethernet silicon beginning with our very first product release back in 2003," said Dave Zabrowski, president and CEO of Neterion. "Neterion offers previously unavailable I/O throughput performance in VMware environments while preserving all of the mobility and management advantages of VMware virtualization that customers desire."

The entire family of Neterion adapters that provides native support for VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i includes the Xframe, Xframe II, and Xframe E as well as the newly announced X3100 Series.

For more information on the Neterion family of 10 GbE adapters, visit: http://www.neterion.com/products/overview.html.

About Neterion

Neterion is the leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters that provide high speed solutions for customers' server and storage systems. Xframe is the industry's highest performing line of 10 GbE adapters, allowing IT managers to virtualize many more applications per physical server, drastically decreasing costs when deploying virtualized servers. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California, with an additional office in Ottawa, Canada. More information on Neterion, Inc., can be found at http://www.neterion.com/.