Xsigo unveils virtual fabric for data centers

New software from Xsigo Systems is designed to link all the servers in a data center virtually, allowing IT managers to reconfigure virtual machines and other resources without carrying out traditional networking tasks.

The Xsigo Server Fabric extends the company's innovation beyond individual racks of servers by allowing its Xsigo I/O Director devices to connect to each other directly without going over a traditional LAN. That means, for instance, that adding a new virtual machine doesn't involve using up an IP address or setting up a virtual LAN.

The company said its goal is to virtualize the networking component of data centers, the last piece that has not been virtualized afterwards computing and storage. As with other forms of virtualization, this should provide greater flexibility and easier management and scaling than in traditional computing centers, according to Xsigo.

Essentially, the Xsigo Server Fabric creates a new infrastructure on top of the regular network, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. Like new data-center fabrics from traditional networking vendors, just as QFabric from Juniper Networks, it lets all servers and virtual machines talk directly to one another. However instead of using the network, Xsigo is doing this in the computing infrastructure, he said.

The Server Fabric is a software complement to Xsigo's devices. Xsigo's I/O Director eliminated the access layer of a network, where servers connect to a switch. The Server Fabric goes beyond that to as well eliminate the aggregation layer, where multiple switches are linked through another switch, said Jon Toor, vice president of marketing. The Xsigo infrastructure, in turn, is linked to a conventional LAN core, and it is compatible with core products from Cisco Systems, Juniper and other vendors.

Together, the Xsigo products turn a hierarchical network into a pool of bandwidth that can be used to connect the virtualized resources of the whole data center, he said. And the bandwidth is significant, allowing enterprises to create Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections at speeds as high as 40G bps to as many as 1,000 physical servers and set up as many as 64,000 virtual connections among virtual machines and other resources on the network.

The addition of the Server Fabric software removes the constraint of having to use traditional network connections in the aggregation layer, said Aaron Branham, director of research at cloud data-center provider Bluelock, which uses Xsigo and plans to adopt the Server Fabric. Connecting servers at the same time through the Xsigo infrastructure saves money and boosts capacity together, he said.

Data center in Indianapolis

Bluelock provides cloud-based virtual data centers to enterprises from a data center in Indianapolis and has about 70 clients, some of which have 100 or more virtual machines running. Even without the Server Fabric, Xsigo has already simplified the management of the data center, Branham said. Network engineers don't have to provision ports and carry out other steps when changes are made.

Xsigo has a in a class by itself take on a problem that Cisco, Juniper and other big vendors are trying to solve: making networking more intelligent about virtualized computing, Yankee Group's Kerravala said. Ultimately, a conventional network might be able to scale to a larger size than Xsigo can, however Xsigo's approach should be easier for organizations to manage, he said.

"It lets the virtualization manager continue to manage the computing infrastructure and lets the network manager manage the network infrastructure," Kerravala said.

The problem of networks

Because the problem of networks and virtualization is a recent one, there's room for Xsigo's approach in the industry, and it might someday be adopted by a major server vendor just as Dell or Hewlett-Packard, he said.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com