Solarflare, Cloudsoft and Citrix Partner to Enable Accelerated Cloud Networking

By VSM News Staff
published: Monday, December 07 2009

Leading companies deliver 18.5 Gbps line-rate networking performance with Citrix XenServer 5.5 and Solarflare 10GbE adapter for enterprise cloud applications

NEW YORK, December 7, 2009 – 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 results showed the combination of high performing, off-the-shelf adapters, switches and Citrix® XenServer™ server virtualization software achieved 4.6 Gbps on multiple, respective, guest-to-guest links. With 4 pairs of guest-to-guest links, the test achieved 18.5 Gbps bi-directional line rate on a 10G physical connection. This represents a five- to six-fold improvement over other server virtualization I/O solutions available on the market.

Effectively deploying enterprise cloud computing applications requires at least three fundamental pillars: security, virtualization and performance. These results demonstrate that the virtual networking environments required by enterprise cloud applications can actually deliver line-rate performance with the use of the Solarflare Solarstorm SFN4112F 10GbE server adapter. Solarflare’s adapter is designed to achieve line-rate performance and architected to support scalable, hardware-assisted virtualization by supporting direct access to the adapter hardware in a XenServer environment.

"We’re very pleased with the performance of our Solarstorm SFN4112F 10GbE server adapter in the testing and delighted to partner with Cloudsoft on Monterey,” said Bruce Tolley, VP Corporate Marketing, Solarflare Communications. “Market trading and financial services are a sweet spot for 10G Ethernet adoption, especially when combined with optimized server virtualization and low latency networking."

This proof-of-concept testing is part of a phased rollout of Cloudsoft’s enterprise-class cloud platform, Monterey. Since Monterey’s launch in September 2009, Cloudsoft has worked closely with its partners to establish its first test environment, showcasing the ease with which mission-critical enterprise applications can be implemented using Cloudsoft’s application delivery platform.

Monterey provides native support for Cloudsoft® Distributed Mediation (CDM), a unique middleware platform that 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.

"What is impressive about these tests is that we were able to take off-the-shelf enterprise class components from our new partners Arista and Solarflare and reproduce near native network performance first reported by Citrix on our core Monterey platform. CDM applications deployed on this platform will benefit from this, particularly those featuring high fan in/fan out, such as our EzBrokerage test case,” added Duncan Johnston-Watt, Founder & CEO, Cloudsoft Corporation. “Looking further ahead, we will be expanding our Monterey initiative early next year, bringing other Monterey nodes online on both the East Coast and in the UK to prove out Cloudsoft’s application mobility over wide area networking."

"These tests make it clear that Monterey has all the building blocks in place to deliver enterprise-class cloud computing today,” said Gordon Mangione, VP of Emerging Products, Datacenter and Cloud Division, 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 – these tests not only provide further validation on the efficiency of leveraging Citrix technology in cloud platforms, but also demonstrate the resulting performance benefits."

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

• Citrix XenServer 5.5
• Intel Xeon 5570 processors
• Super Micro 2U Twin2 chassis
• Arista Networks 7148SX 48 Port 10GbE switch
• Solarflare Solarstorm SFN4112F 10GbE server adapters

The full enterprise-class Citrix XenServer platform is free of charge to any user for unlimited production deployment. Please visit www.citrix.com/freexenserver for more information.

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 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, 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 Corporation provides cloud computing software and services that empower organizations to quickly develop, deploy and migrate applications in the cloud.  With its proven high-performance computing expertise and innovative middleware platform, Cloudsoft helps companies eliminate network and processing bottlenecks, optimize resource management and significantly reduce deployment costs in both legacy and cloud environments.  Cloudsoft delivers the accelerated time-to-market, uncompromising performance and on-demand scalability required to reliably meet the business needs of the most data-intensive and dynamic computing 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 www.cloudsoftcorp.com.