A POWER6 Virtualization Performance Study Using Integrated Virtual Ethernet

Data latency has long been a top concern for corporations where less than a millisecond can determine whether revenue is lost or made. The introduction of the IBM POWER6 processor-based server brought to market several advances in server design, performance, and function. One of these key enhancements is the capability to virtualize Ethernet within a server. This new technology offers significant low-latency advantages in virtualized solutions which contribute to a business's bottom line.

This paper highlights data latency's application to business results, discusses POWER6 virtualization and the Integrated Virtual Ethernet functionality, presents a virtualization performance study, and concludes that IBM's POWER6 virtual technologies reduce data latency while increasing performance. The study showed that the POWER6 processor-based server's Host Ethernet Adapter produced a significant advantage in performance over other vendor technologies. IBM's HEA can provide very low latency while providing secured, shared access to many partitions.