What Is Virtual I/O (VIO)?

Virtual I/O is the way to go, and it's not just because it's a cool name. Virtual I/O is a great way to get more from your server. It's like having multiple NICs and HBAs but without the hassle of buying new hardware and installing it on your server. And the best part? Virtual I/O can be used in enterprise environments to lower costs and improve performance. The VIO architecture allows you to assign multiple virtual adapters to a single physical adapter card, thus increasing your hardware investment efficiency. With virtual I/O, you can consolidate several physical adapter cards onto one computer and one adapter card. It improves performance and decreases costs by using less costly power-hungry adapter cards. Virtual I/O can be implemented in several ways. SR-IOV uses specialized hardware (also called hardware acceleration) to accelerate the speed of data movement between the server and the network. Network adapters with a software-based approach offload specific tasks, such as processing and management, to software rather than hardware. The most common software-based system is Virtual Guest. Virtual I/O is a great way to ensure you get the most out of your virtualized environment. It's easy to think that you need to throw a bunch of servers at a problem, but this is only sometimes the case. Your servers need bandwidth to run your applications, and you need connections to multiple networks and storage devices. That's where virtualized I/O comes in—it allows numerous applications to run simultaneously without slowing down your servers. The trick is using a single virtualized I/O connection that has more bandwidth than any one server can handle. If you have one server with 2 gigabytes of memory, but it needs 8 gigabytes just to run its applications, you can use 4 gigabytes from each of the four other servers to give it what it needs!