QLogic announced that QLogic and Microsoft achieved performance results that demonstrate near-native transaction performance for a virtualized computing environment. The companies tested storage area network (SAN)-attached, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines and achieved I/O performance that closely matches the 200,000 IOs per second performance native with QLogic 8Gb adapters and Windows Server 2008. By comparison, I/O performance on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008, was at least 90 percent and as much as 97 percent of the native I/O performance across a data range for enterprise applications.

"QLogic's benchmark result surpasses the existing benchmark results in the market, and demonstrates that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V customers can achieve higher server utilization rates and consolidate servers with great technical performance," said Mike Schutz, director of product management, Windows Server and Solutions Division at Microsoft Corp. "The microkernelized architecture of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is designed from the ground up to optimize I/O performance. With support for features like pass-through virtual machine disk access, customers can receive high I/O performance for SAN-attached servers when combined with high performance products such as QLogic 8Gb adapters."

By combining Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters, customers can deploy performance-intensive, enterprise-class applications in virtual machines and bring the advantages of virtualization to the most demanding datacenter. Fully interoperable with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb adapters enable consolidation of virtual machines without sacrificing I/O performance.

"QLogic 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters deliver the I/O bandwidth and scalability demanded by SAN-attached virtualized workloads running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V," said Satish Lakshmanan, director of product marketing, QLogic Host Solutions Group. "Through our work with Microsoft, QLogic is able to apply its deep knowledge of adapter port virtualization to develop increasingly valuable customer solutions."

Microsoft Can Make Server Virtualization Easier
Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine as a virtual machine. With server virtualization, IT administrators can consolidate workloads of underutilized server machines onto a smaller number of fully utilized machines. Fewer physical machines can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, and the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure. With Windows Server 2008, everything needed to support server virtualization and presentation virtualization is available as a feature of the operating system.

QLogic 2500 Series Adapters -- Transforming Server Connectivity into Competitive Advantage
The QLogic 2500 Series is a family of 8Gb Fibre Channel-to-PCIe Gen2 adapters designed for next generation virtualized data centers with powerful multi-processor, multi-core servers. QLogic 2500 Series adapters are optimized for virtualization, power, reliability, availability, serviceability, security and management to transform server connectivity into competitive advantage. QLogic 8Gb adapters provide complete investment protection by maintaining backward compatibility with previous Fibre Channel networks and PCIe host bus speeds, and are set apart from all other 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters, thanks to two breakthrough innovations under the QLogic Star Power(tm) Green Initiative -- Dynamic Power Management and Cool HBA technologies. Dynamic power management is the unique ability of the QLogic 8Gb adapters to sense the type of PCI Express bus that is present and consume only the amount of power necessary to run at full speed. QLogic Cool HBA technology is the ability of QLogic products to operate without any air flow, unlike competitive products which require large heat sinks and fans to be cool.