At the latest Storage Networking World, Neterion was showing off not only the exceptional speed of its adapters but also the flexibility to boot servers from a SAN volume.

And, as it turns out, there's more. This week Neterion revealed that shipping versions of its Xframe HBA contain hidden features that provide more comprehensive support for input devices in a virtualized computing infrastructure.

I'll get to some practical examples in a minute, but first let me complete the picture with the name of this Neterion-developed jewel: HyperframeT, "a 10GbE IOV [I/O virtualization] architecture," to use the vendor's own words.

I can understand if the word "virtualization" triggered a contemptuous roll of the eyes: Marketing folks have abused this word until it has become almost devoid of any practical meaning. But in this case, an eye roll may not have been warranted.

There are so many good virtualization technologies in storage (and elsewhere in the datacenter) that no marketing campaign will ever push "virtualization" into oblivion. Virtualization is a like a thread keeping your IT infrastructure together. If we attempted to remove that thread, the whole apparatus would collapse to the ground.