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May 3, 2006

Mellanox and Novell Drive High Bandwidth Virtualization Into Data Centers

InfiniBand and Xen hypervisor primed for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform

INTEROP 2006, LAS VEGAS, NV – May 3, 2006 – Mellanox™ Technologies Ltd, the leader in business and technical computing interconnects, Mellanox™ Technologies Ltd, the leader in business and technical computing interconnects, announced its collaboration with Novell to build an integrated solution that delivers Xen 3.0.2 virtualization in conjunction with Mellanox’s 20Gb/s InfiniBand fabric solutions on top of Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform. 

“Data center designers that cannot compromise on latency delays in their applications, and want to consolidate I/O, find InfiniBand’s value proposition to be very compelling,” said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux at Novell.  “We are happy to be working with Mellanox at several mutual customers to deliver a solution that offers better control over the network fabric and a strong foundation to deploy Xen virtualization for large, multi-node clusters. By using open source InfiniBand software from OpenFabrics.org to add support for InfiniBand based I/O virtualization, we will enable organizations to improve server utilization and create a flexible and responsive data center.”

The Xen hypervisor offers the ability to ensure service levels by guaranteeing guests committed fractions of the total CPU processing power. I/O channel capabilities supported in Mellanox InfiniBand adapters extend the same service level guarantees to the I/O pipe.  The Xen hypervisor can also migrate live workloads from one physical server to another. By using high-performance RDMA technologies, such workloads can be migrated much faster, reducing CPU utilization and service downtimes significantly.

“Mellanox 20Gb/s InfiniBand adapters’ virtual I/O channel features are synergistic with the paravirtualization capabilities offered by Xen, enabling guest OSes to reach near-native I/O performance,” said Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Novell’s initiatives to optimize Xen hypervisor technologies over InfiniBand, and then bring those technologies to market, will deliver a robust platform for applications in areas such as financial data centers that demand maximum price-performance benefits.”

Come Visit Mellanox Technologies at Interop Las Vegas 2006 (May 2-5, Las Vegas)

Mellanox will be at Interop Las Vegas, Booth #1382 during exhibition hours, where several InfiniBand technologies will be showcased:

  • Voltaire (www.voltaire.com) will demonstrate a solution that enables users to create and centrally manage virtual connectivity and I/O for Xen-based virtual servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.  Users will be able to take advantage of the solution to maximize the data center infrastructure, unifying InfiniBand, Ethernet and Fibre Channel through the use of Voltaire’s Grid Director™ ISR 9096 multi-service switch and Voltaire’s management software.  By leveraging 20Gb/s InfiniBand users can migrate and deploy virtual servers at unprecedented speeds.
  • Diversified Technology (www.dtims.com) will demonstrate their Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) “Fabric Race”.  ATCA is an open-standard, fabric-agnostic architecture developed by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG, www.picmg.org). This demo pits Gigabit Ethernet (ATCA 3.1 sub-specification) versus InfiniBand (via ATCA 3.2 sub-specification) and features real-time benchmarking of bandwidth, latency, and CPU utilization for random packet sizes. Typical applications for this high availability chassis are industrial automation, transportation monitoring, multimedia broadcasting, government R&D projects, and military command and control.
  • InfiniBand-over-Cat6 physical media capabilities in partnership with KeyEye Communications (www.keyeye.net)
  • InfiniBand-over-fiber optic capabilities in partnership with Emcore Corporation (www.emcore.com)

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies is the leader in high-performance interconnect solutions that consolidate communications, computing, management, and storage onto a single fabric. Based on InfiniBand technology, Mellanox adapters and switch silicon are the foundation for virtualized data centers and high-performance computing fabrics that deliver optimal performance, scalability, reliability, manageability and total cost of ownership.

Founded in 1999, Mellanox Technologies is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information on Mellanox’s solutions, please visit www.mellanox.com.

Mellanox is a registered trademark of Mellanox Technologies, Inc. and InfiniBlast, InfiniBridge, InfiniHost, InfiniRISC, InfiniScale, and InfiniPCI are trademarks of Mellanox Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

For more information:
Mellanox Technologies, Inc.
Thad Omura, Vice President of Product Marketing
408-970-3400
media@mellanox.com


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