Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Technology

Hardware-assisted virtualization

Hardware-based Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)¹ improves the fundamental flexibility and robustness of traditional software-based virtualization solutions by accelerating key functions of the virtualized platform, including:

• Speeding up the transfer of platform control between the guest OSs and the VMM
• Enabling the VMM to securely assign specific I/O devices to specific guest OSs
• Optimizing the network for virtualization with adapter-based acceleration

Virtualization is being used in a wide variety of industries and systems for new virtualization-based capabilities, including disaster recovery, high availability, and business continuity.

Features

Hardware-assisted Intel® VT is built into every aspect of server platforms based on Intel® processor technology.

Processors

Get enhanced virtualization performance and seamless migration of workloads with the Intel® Xeon® processor family (Intel® VT-x) with integrated Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration and Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexPriority.

Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 Series with next-generation Intel® Virtualization Technology enables best-in-class virtualization performance, superb scalability, enhanced flexibility, and simplified server management.

Intel® Xeon® Processor 6500 Series delivers intelligent and scalable performance optimized for efficient data center virtualization.

Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 Family features flexible virtualization that automatically adapts to the diverse needs of a virtualized environment with built-in hardware assists.

Chipset

Speed up data movement and reduce the performance overhead of virtualization with Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O.

Connectivity

Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) for Connectivity (Intel® VT-c) is a collection of I/O virtualization technologies that enables lower CPU utilization, reduced system latency, and improved networking and I/O throughout. Intel® VT-c is one of the key component technology suites under Intel Virtualization Technology.

Intel® VT-c provides I/O technologies and optimizes virtualized performance through:

• Enhanced data acceleration across the Intel multi-core processor platforms
• Improved data processing performance across multiple queues on the network controller

Direct VM connectivity and data protection between the VMs

Next-generation virtualization

Intel® VT-c consists of platform-level technologies and initiatives that work together to deliver next-generation virtualized I/O including Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDQ) and Virtual Machine Direct Connect (VMDC).

IT Resources

Watch this Virtualization demo

Simplify VMware vSphere* 4 Networking with Intel® Ethernet 10 Gigabit Server Adapters >

Advanced Virtualization I/O Queuing Technologies—An Intel®-Microsoft Perspective >

IDC White Paper: Optimizing I/O Virtualization: Preparing the Datacenter for Next-Generation Applications >

Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers With Intel® Virtualization Technology and the PCI-SIG* Single Root I/O Virtualization and Sharing Specification >

Virtual Switches Demand Rethinking Connectivity for Servers >