Allied Telesis Delivers on High-Resiliency Promise with Launch of Enhanced Network Interface Card

Chiasso, Switzerland, February 11, 2010 - Allied Telesis has launched a high-performance virtualization Network Interface Card (NIC) for servers running virtual machines. The 2973T/4, an enhanced version of the 2973 family launched in November 2009, is a quad-port 1000T Gigabit PCIe x4 virtualization NIC. This card combines virtualization with high resiliency, offering more robust application performance across the network.

The operating system needed to perform as a virtual machine is complex, and whilst chipsets have been enhanced in recent years, it is still a significant task to create a true virtual machine. Queuing is a common issue with virtual machines, reducing performance as the host CPU performs the task of assembling/disassembling incoming messages, and sending them to the correct queue for each virtual machine. The 2973T/4 performs this task, as well as TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) functions, relieving the host CPU, and therefore increasing throughput significantly.

Melvyn Wray, Senior VP of Product Marketing EMEA at Allied Telesis said, "Resiliency is fundamental to the way IT networks are evolving and our strategy is to deliver highly resilient, cost-effective solutions to enterprise, metropolitan and carrier networks. The upgrade to the 2973 range is just one of the areas where we are enhancing our offering to meet customer demands."

The 2973T/4 is powerful enough to achieve a throughput of up to 2 Gbps per link, allowing the network to run mission-critical applications effectively. It is MSI-x (Message Signal Interrupt) capable, which allows it to control multiple network queues, one for each virtual machine, to conform to the latest PCIe standard. The 2973T/4 also supports iSCSI v1.0 and can be an iSER Host Bus Adaptor (HBA) initiator, allowing the main computer to be connected to network storage devices. The AT-2973T/4 is available from March 2010.