Emulex announced that its LightPulse family of 8Gb/s and 4Gb/s Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) support Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and its new Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) feature. PRO, coupled with Emulex's management pack for PRO, enables administrators to monitor and control the allocation of virtualized servers connected to a storage area network (SAN). This enables customers to manage the performance of their virtualized infrastructure. Emulex's management pack for PRO provides Virtual Machine Manager with the I/O connectivity information needed to improve the placement and migration of virtual machines based on storage requirements and available resources.

"Emulex is committed to working with Microsoft to deliver products to the market that offer cutting edge I/O connectivity tools and features for virtualized server environments," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corp. "As server virtualization continues to drive SAN attach rates, Emulex's Fibre Channel HBAs provide end users with a comprehensive feature set that ensures server virtualization environments are optimized for SAN connectivity."

Emulex HBAs feature LightPulse Virtual HBA technology which offers SAN connectivity and serves as a vital element of Microsoft's overall data center virtualization management strategy. Emulex HBAs also improve I/O scalability in the data center and enhance overall system performance in Microsoft virtualization environments by incorporating the Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) standard, which improves application performance and reduces host CPU utilization.

"System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, or VMware ESX Server. We are pleased that Emulex is an early adopter and incorporating the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) feature of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Virtual HBA technology to ensure SAN best practices and enhanced data center application performance, to help our customers meet the resource demands of server virtualization and Windows Hyper-V," said Dai Vu, director of Virtualization Product and Solutions Marketing at Microsoft Corp. "We look forward to continuing to build on our long-standing relationship with Emulex to ensure the success of our innovative, industry-leading solutions and to meet the evolving needs of our mutual customers."