BLADE Network Technologies, Solarflare, Cloudsoft and Citrix Systems Demonstrate Industry's Consistently Fastest 10 Gigabit Ethernet Network for Virtualization and Cloud Computing

SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/27/10 -- BLADE Network Technologies, the data center Ethernet switching company, Solarflare® Communications, the leading provider of 10GbE silicon, and Cloudsoft Corporation, a provider of cloud computing software and services that drive application mobility, announced today the results of multivendor benchmarking of Monterey, Cloudsoft's enterprise-class cloud platform. The benchmark showed that the 10 Gigabit Ethernet test environment achieved consistently low network latency of just 26 microseconds between Virtual Machines (VMs) communicating on different hosts. The testing demonstrates that near-native performance is now possible with applications running in a highly virtualized cloud computing environment.

The combination of BLADE's RackSwitch G8124 10GbE switch, Solarflare's SolarStorm™ SFN4112F 10GbE NIC and Citrix® XenServer® server virtualization software achieved 18.5 Gbps bi-directional network throughput with four VMs on one host communicating with four VMs on a second host over a single 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection. This represents the top VM communication performance achieved to-date using a state-of-the-art networking and virtualization environment.

The Monterey benchmark was achieved using EzBrokerage, an electronic trading application that demonstrates the value of Monterey in a financial markets context. EzBrokerage was implemented using Cloudsoft's middleware platform deployed on an enterprise-class cloud infrastructure. The exceptionally consistent low latency achieved under high load is the result of extensive integration efforts by BLADE, Solarflare, Citrix and Cloudsoft.

The benchmark results validate the use of cloud computing and server virtualization for latency-sensitive applications, such as high-frequency trading and market data systems.

"Enterprises seeking to adopt cloud computing and virtualization for critical business applications can gain a significant performance advantage with 10 Gigabit Ethernet," said Dan Tuchler, vice president of Strategy and Product Management, BLADE Network Technologies. "The Monterey benchmark shows that putting speed and intelligence at the edge of the network enables cloud computing and server virtualization environments to perform on par with physical servers."

"This benchmark is further validation that the Monterey stack consistently meets the industry's vital low-latency requirements without customization -- even under heavy loads and large subnet sizes," said Duncan Johnston-Watt, founder and CEO, Cloudsoft Corporation.

"IT and data center managers want to use virtualization to increase server resource utilization, flexibility, and manageability, but have been frustrated by the experience of degradation in network performance when running guest applications," said Bruce Tolley, vice president of Solutions Marketing, Solarflare Communications. "We're very pleased the test results demonstrate that customers can get near-native network performance and application latency with Solarflare 10GbE network adapters with virtualized applications and cloud middleware."

The test configuration consisted of the following elements provided by Monterey partners:

• Super Micro 2U Twin
• Intel Xeon X5570 Processors
• Citrix XenServer 5.5 software/OS⁽¹⁾
• Solarfare SolarStorm SFN4112F 10GbE NICs
• BLADE RackSwitch G8124 10GbE switch
• Debian Etch 32-bit Linux OS (standard XenServer ISO image)
• Monterey Middleware software

Cloudsoft's unique middleware platform simplifies the development and deployment of complex transactional applications in the cloud. Cloudsoft's patented technology automatically eliminates network and processing bottlenecks, optimizes resource management and implements policies, such as follow-the-sun to minimize latency and follow-the-moon to compress costs.

One of the key features of the Monterey platform is support for application mobility, allowing a network path or processing location to be changed while the application is live. Among other benefits of mobility is the ability to scale-up and scale-out as application load changes in real-time. The network environment can be further enhanced for security, performance and access with BLADE's unique VMready™, virtualization-aware networking that automatically moves network policies as Virtual Machines move.

"These tests make it clear that Monterey can deliver enterprise-class cloud computing today with partners such as BLADE Network Technologies," said Lou Shipley, group vice president and GM, XenServer Product Group, Citrix Systems. "Citrix has enabled cloud providers to offer a rich portfolio of enterprise services leveraging XenServer and the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) at no charge -- and these new tests provide further validation on the efficiency of leveraging Citrix technology in cloud platforms."

About Solarflare Communications, Inc.
Solarflare Communications is the leading provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) silicon and server adapters. Solarflare's robust and power-efficient solutions are cost effective and easy to deploy. Ready for primetime, Solarflare 10GbE products make possible next-generation applications such as cloud computing, server virtualization, network convergence and low-latency networking (with OpenOnload™) for market data applications. Solarflare 10GbE adapters have proven their performance in testing conducted by Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) Research with Cisco switches and IBM servers. Solarflare silicon can be found in switches, adapters and test equipment shipping from Dell, SMC Networks and others. The company has announced partnerships with Accton, Arista Networks, Citrix Systems, Cloudsoft, CommScope, Delta Networks, Panduit, SR Labs and VMware. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California, has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK and sales offices in Taiwan and China. For more information on pricing and availability of Solarflare products, contact productinfo@solarflare.com.

About Cloudsoft Corporation
Cloudsoft provides cloud middleware and services that radically simplify the development, deployment and policy-based runtime management of enterprise applications in the cloud. The company's innovative approach to middleware minimizes time-to-market while providing the uncompromising performance and on-demand scalability required to reliably meet the business needs of the most data-intensive and dynamic computing environments. Cloudsoft's enterprise class cloud platform, Monterey, implements fine-grained application mobility enabling dynamic change to some or all of the infrastructure utilized by an application without any service disruption to end users. Monterey's patented middleware technology eliminates network and processing bottlenecks, optimizes resource management, and significantly reduces deployment costs in both legacy and cloud environments. The company maintains partnerships with leading high-performance computing and cloud innovators such as Citrix Systems, Intel Corporation and Super Micro Computer. For more information, visit http://www.cloudsoftcorp.com/.

About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), the data center Ethernet switching company, brings intelligence and speed to the edge of the network where it's closer to business applications, users and innovation. BLADE's superior performance, ultra-low latency and virtual machine awareness are ideally suited to handle dynamic demands at the network edge. BLADE's lossless, low-latency, low-cost and low-power RackSwitch™ 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, VMready network virtualization and BLADEharmony switch management connect and unify physical and virtual servers, storage and networks in the world's largest data centers. BLADE's Unified Fabric Architecture™ is a fast, virtual, proven and interoperable converged fabric for Ethernet Everywhere. For more information, visit www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork

BLADE Network Technologies, the BLADE logo, BLADEHarmony, BLADEOS, FabricHarmony, RackSwitch, RackSwitch Solution Partner, SmartConnect, Smart Server Control, VMready, vNIC, NMotion and Unified FabricArchitecture are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. Citrix® and XenServer® are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

(1) Users can expect even better performance with the latest 5.6 version of Citrix XenServer

Add to Digg Bookmark with del.icio.us Add to Newsvine