Following a two year collaboration between NetXen and VMware, the first 10-Gigabit Intelligent NIC solution to be natively supported by VMware is now available. The solution is called NetSlice and it offers drivers for VMware's latest version of VI3, version 3.5. The NetSlice driver technology is designed to optimize the I/O subsystem of virtual machines. This is an area that has been identified by many as a pro Following a two year collaboration between NetXen and VMware, the first 10-Gigabit Intelligent NIC solution to be natively supported by VMware is now available.The solution is called NetSlice and it offers drivers for VMware’s latest version of VI3, version 3.5. The NetSlice driver technology is designed to optimize the I/O subsystem of virtual machines. This is an area that has been identified by many as a problem within virtualization. As the technology gets combined with server consolidation initiatives, a heavy burden gets placed on the network subsystem that typically wasn’t there previously. Today’s 1 Gig network adapters can’t keep up. The NetSlice architecture provides a broad set of I/O virtualization resources that enable virtual machines to achieve significantly higher I/O performance than non-virtualized NICs. “Virtualization, multicore processors and high-performance networking will form the basis of next-generation virtual datacenters,” said Vikram Karvat, senior director of marketing, NetXen. “The new NetSlice driver with ESX Server 3.5 support will allow our customers to deploy leading-edge networking and virtualization technologies that are architected and validated jointly between NetXen and VMware. The result is a robust, high-performance networking solution that will enable virtual infrastructures to continue to scale.”NetXen Intelligent NIC products with I/O virtualization support are currently shipping to leading server OEMs. The NetSlice driver for VMware ESX Server 3.5 is inbox and also available for download from VMware. Software Development