Napatech (News - Alert) plans to demonstrate a new VMware-based data distribution solution for virtual network appliances at Interop Las Vegas scheduled to take place from the 8th to the 12th of May.

According to company sources this virtualization solution will enable multiple network appliances to be consolidated on a single server platform. Also it does not require any changes to be made to the application or the operating system.

The network adapters from Napatech are able to ensure that each virtual network appliance will receive the data it requires at full line rate with zero packet loss. Virtualization helps in consolidating multiple applications and workloads on fewer servers enabling reduction in required space and power making it cost effective.

In a release Erik Norup (News - Alert), president of Napatech Inc. said, “The Napatech virtual appliances solution brings the benefits of virtualization to OEM vendors network appliances for network monitoring and analysis, test and security by allowing several virtual network appliances to share data captured by the Napatech network adapter.”

It was also revealed that the Napatech virtual appliance solution is based on VMwares ability to transfer large amounts of data in real-time between virtual machines.

A single Napatech network adapter can be installed in a standard server that serves multiple monitoring and analysis applications. Each appliance application is installed on a virtual machine with the same environment and operating system that is used in the individual appliances.

Company sources explained that a Napatech data distribution virtual machine will take care of the sharing and distributing of captured data to each appliance virtual machine. This allows the sharing of the same captured data stream among several appliance applications simultaneously.

Norup further summarized the advantages saying that this method allows existing network appliance applications to be ported quickly and easily to a virtual environment without necessitating any changes to the application.

Also it allows diverse environments and operating systems to be supported on the same server besides allowing legacy appliances to be quickly upgraded to support higher speed interfaces. In case of low-throughput or single-threaded applications it allows several instances of the application to be installed on the same server providing a fast and easier path to higher throughput performance.

At Interop 2011 Napatech and Spirent (News - Alert) Communications will host a live demo of data center virtualization environments supporting 40G Ethernet (GbE) server interfaces that will enable high speed data center environments in enterprises.