[May 28, 2012] OpenFabrics Alliance: Microsoft to Include Remote Direct Memory Access in Windows Server 2012 [Health & Beauty Close - Up] Tweet (Health & Beauty Close - Up Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The OpenFabrics Alliance announced that Microsoft has worked with the OFA community to include Remote Direct Memory Access capabilities in the beta version of Windows Server 2012 (formerly known as Windows Server 8). According to a release, this includes RDMA support for remote file access with Server Message Block version 3 and a new kernel bypass RDMA application programmer interface. The new Windows Server operating system provides RDMA based file storage for virtualized workloads utilizing Windows Hyper-V and for Microsoft SQL Server 2012, providing support for RDMA over both Ethernet and InfiniBand. "We are thrilled Microsoft is recognizing the growing industry acceptance of RDMA communications by embracing OFS in Windows Server 2012 including support for both InfiniBand and Ethernet-based RDMA transports, iWARP and RoCE," said Jim Ryan, OpenFabrics Alliance chair. "This validates the OpenFabrics premise - RDMA-based networks are the future in cloud and enterprise data center applications - highest-speed, lowest latency, most efficient data movement and significant power savings." Jim Pinkerton, partner architect in the File Server Technologies development group, described Microsoft's strategy in moving RDMA into broad data center deployments at the recent OFA's user and developer workshop. "This move represents a further step in our on-going commitment to making cutting edge technology more accessible to the mainstream," said Pinkerton. "We have been contributing to the OpenFabrics for Windows community in the HPC space and are now providing the same RDMA capability to key enterprise workloads via the SMB3 file sharing protocol." The RDMA hardware and drivers supported in Windows Server 2012 Beta have been developed and tested by key members of the OFA. To date, Microsoft has qualified several 10GbE and InfiniBand adapters from Mellanox Technologies. For more information, see this presentation from this year's OFA User and Developer Workshop. Stan Smith, OFA Windows Working Group chair, said, "We are proud to have OpenFabrics drivers and protocols 'in-box' for the Windows Server 2012 Beta release. End-users, Cloud and Data Center service providers will now be able to benefit from the application acceleration gains and the high efficiency solution Microsoft is now delivering." The OpenFabrics Alliance is a non-profit company that develops, tests, licenses and distributes the OpenFabrics Software - multi- platform, high-performance, low-latency and energy-efficient open- source RDMA software. Windows Server 2012 Beta is available for download at technet.microsoft.com/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx. ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) (c) 2012 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]