For example, a 10Gbps network appliance can be upgraded to support 40Gbps by porting four instances of the appliance software to four virtual machines running on a single server supported by a single 40Gbps intelligent network adapter. Four logical ports are created to distribute the data between the four VMs making sure that none of the VMs receive more than the expected 10Gbps of data. Thus, a 10Gbps network appliance becomes a 40Gbps network appliance without having to re-haul the network appliance application software.

This approach can also be used to upgrade older network appliances supporting legacy operating systems or where resources to update the network appliance application software no longer are available.

Consolidation of network appliances is the last frontier of virtualization in the data center. While many high-speed, high-performance network appliances already make optimal use of the server resources available to them, there are many opportunities to consolidate appliances, especially as we move to higher network speeds and ever more powerful physical servers.

Napatech is the leading OEM supplier of 40GbE, 10GbE and 1GbE intelligent adapters for real-time network analysis with over 80,000 Ethernet ports deployed. For more information visit us at: www.napatech.com.

in Network World's Data Center section.