Mellanox RDMA-based interconnects with Windows Server 2012 deliver world record application performance and scalability for Hyper-V, SQL and Remote File Server (SMB) based solutions

Mellanox Technologies has announced that its RDMA-based interconnect technology is supported in Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012. Mellanox's RDMA interconnect drivers are key components to accelerate and improve performance of Windows Server 2012-based storage, cloud, Web 2.0 and high-performance applications. Using the new File Server SMB 3.0 capability that supports SMB over native RDMA and Mellanox interconnect solutions, end-users can increase SQL Server database performance while reducing capital and operating expenses by consolidating their interconnect infrastructure into a single high-speed interconnect. In addition, end-users can achieve industry-leading, low-latency performance for applications in a virtualized Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V-based data center and in cloud-based high-performance applications.

“Windows Server 2012 includes innovative new storage capabilities. To give users industry-leading networking performance along with new features, we’re happy to have Mellanox RDMA interconnect solutions in Windows Server 2012”
“Windows Server 2012 includes innovative new storage capabilities. To give users industry-leading networking performance along with new features, we’re happy to have Mellanox RDMA interconnect solutions in Windows Server 2012,” said Thomas Pfenning, General Manager, File Server Foundation, at Microsoft. “Now networking performance for server applications such as Windows Server Hyper-V or SQL Server can be on par with performance for local storage and with lower CPU overheard.”

Mellanox’s RDMA-based interconnect end-to-end market-proven solutions maximize the performance and reduce overhead of enterprise data centers. The solution components include ConnectX-3 10/40Gb/s Ethernet and ConnectX-3 FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand adapters, SwitchX based switches, all connected by Mellanox high-performance cables.

“Mellanox InfiniBand and Ethernet RDMA interconnect solutions, integrated with Windows Server 2012, provide end-users with an attractive, high performance and cost-effective solution,” said David Barzilai, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Our RDMA-based interconnect solutions, with in-box support in Windows Servers 2012, have been extensively tested and optimized to remove server and storage bottlenecks to improve application efficiency in converged, clustered and virtualized environments.”

The collaboration between Mellanox and Microsoft resulted in new capabilities and performance records with Windows Server 2012 that will enable the creation of efficient cloud infrastructures based on Hyper-V. The companies continue to develop solutions to enable extremely large scale, multi-tenants clouds connected via a virtualized, high-performance and flat interconnect infrastructure using technologies such as NVGRE (Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation).

Mellanox’s end-to-end FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand with Windows Server 2012 has also enabled a new performance record for remote file storage using EchoStreams’ FlacheSAN2 Storage Array. Benchmark results attained a sustainable bandwidth rate of 16.8 GB/s of throughput when running the Windows Server 2012 SMB Direct protocol over a single-client server equipped with three ConnectX-3 56Gb/s adapters communicating to EchoStream’s FlacheSAN2, a 2U flash cache storage array with total raw storage capacities of 11TB.

“Data consumption demands are growing at an exponential rate and require solutions that can deliver leading-edge performance and scalability,” said Gene Lee, President and CEO at EchoStreams. “We’ve worked closely with Mellanox to ensure that our FlacheSAN2 flash cache storage array enables applications that use remote file servers to achieve similar performance to local block storage, with the ease of a file server that simplifies data center management at a lower total cost of ownership.”

Benchmark Your Application over Windows Server 2012 SMB Direct

Visit the Mellanox Technologies website to register at our Enterprise Data Center performance lab and to self-experience the application boost you get when running over Windows Server 2012 using SMB Direct technology http://www.mellanox.com/content/pages.php?pg=file_server.