Well, for a $125M who wouldn’t? But InfiniBand (“IB”) you say? Isn’t that some legacy 10 year old technology that is only seen in High Performance Computing (“HPC”) supercompute farms? Au contraire! There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, so let’s explore why Intel made the move to bring back a technology it helped create in 1999, only to cast it away, then buy it all back in 2012.
Infiniband History
InfiniBand came about when 2 competing technologies merged: Future I/O by Compaq, IBM, HP and Next Generation I/O by Intel, Microsoft, and Sun. Yet infiniband was only adopted heavily by the HPC supercompute infrastructures who wanted to push the state-of-the-art in network performance. Most IT organizations stayed with Ethernet due to the the price/functionality ratio. As Cloud came of age, the density, performance, low-latency, security and other features of InfiniBand would become paramount. As such, InfiniBand is making a HUGE comeback.Cloud, Powered by InfiniBand
dinCloud uses infiniband extensively via it’s dinStack coalition partner Xsigo Systems.
Why? Here’s a few quick bullet points:
Lower latency than ethernet. Critical when delivering virtual desktops where every click has to be fast.
Better security than VLANs. IB is authenticated at L2.
Virtualize’s I/O. Simply hooking up each server with QDR IB drives 40gbps of network uplink per connection that can be virtually carved up with any # of Ethernet or Fibre Channel interfaces.
Hypervisor Agnostic. IB works with VMware ESXi and Hyper-V. This enables high availability, redundancy and security.
Reduces human error. Thanks to virtual profiles, each server always winds up on the right part of the network. Less chance of wrong cable, wrong switch, wrong VLAN which minimizes troubleshooting mysteries.
Less cost. More performance. Bang for the buck – IB surpasses Ethernet, hands down.
Conclusion
InfiniBand / “IB” is a pillar of everything Cloud. As such, it’s back with a vengeance! If you want to leverage IB plus many other state-of-the-art technologies, then get in on our $0 CAPEX, 23-55% OPEX savings virtual private datacenters (“vpDC’s) by contacting dinCloud today, or just click here. Get started on your public/private/hybrid Cloud TODAY!
