HP Integrity VM Accelerated Virtual I/O Overview

migrate to AVIO.

AVIO Storage Integration with the HP-UX 11iv3 Next Generation Mass

Storage Stack

Describes the benefits and features of AVIO storage integration with the Next

Generation Mass Storage Stack. In addition, detailed tuning information will be

described to provide better management and performance with Integrity VM 4.0 and

AVIO Storage.

Unless specifically noted, all of the information below applies to both Integrity VM 3.5 and 4.0.

Publication History

• December 2007: Initial Publication

• September 2008: Addition of Integrity VM 4.0 details

Benefits, Features, Limits, and Restrictions of AVIO

Integrity VM 3.5 and AVIO have the following benefits and features compared to Integrity VM

Version 3.0 I/O:

• Improved performance – up to 2X bandwidth, up to 60% reduction in CPU costs

over

the fully virtualized SCSI and LAN solutions.

• Increased LUN count – up to 128 LUNs per guest AVIO storage device (as compared

with only 30 for the current Integrity VM SCSI HBA).

• Extensible I/O architecture that allows seamless integration of new I/O and Server

Virtualization features.

Integrity VM 4.0 and AVIO have the following benefits and features compared to Integrity VM

Version 3.5 and AVIO:

• AVIO Storage integration with the HP-UX 11iv3 Next Generation Mass

Storage Stack – AVIO Storage is now fully integrated with the Next Generation Mass

Storage Stack. This enables AVIO Storage to take advantage of the native multi-pathing

feature, increased LUN and logical volume capacity with the Next Generation Mass Storage

Stack.

• Improved High Availability – AVIO now supports the online deletion of physical PCI

I/O Adapters without shutting down the server (or Virtual Machines). In addition, you can

also change an AVIO guest driver or a physical host I/O driver without rebooting the server

(or Virtual Machine). When combined with the existing online addition and replacement

features, Integrity VM 4.0 and AVIO enables customers to achieve the highest level of uptime

without sacrificing the need to perform routine maintenance.

• Improved networking performance – up to 2X bandwidth and 50% reduction in

transmit CPU costs for 10GbE backing interfaces

. Up to 70% reduction in receive CPU costs

for 10GbE backing interfaces

• Improved storage performance – up to 1.6X I/O transactions per second and 65%

reduction in CPU costs on guests with multiple virtual CPUs (vCPUs). The guest should be

configured with at least as many AVIO storage Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) as the number of

guest CPUs for best performance.

CPU cost is defined as the amount of CPU consumed per unit of data.

These improvements are at lower message sizes (i.e. 1-4KB message sizes) when transmitting data from a guest.

This improvement is at lower message sizes (i.e. 1-4KB message sizes) when receiving data in a guest