Mellanox Powers Pensions First

Mellanox Technologies Ltd announced that its Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) solution has been chosen by Pensions First to power its multi-tenanted private cloud business intelligence solution, which uses Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

VPI technology delivers data communication over FDR 56Gb/s IB and 10/40GbE which allows customers to select their fabric of choice across a common infrastructure.

The Pensions First Cloud is a Microsoft-based open and flexible platform that enables Pensions First and its customers to build, deploy and manage applications across data centers. It hosts blue-chip customers on its PFaroe web-based platform. PFaroe provides granular and accurate analysis of defined benefit pensions risk for non-actuarial pension managers, CFOs, treasurers and trustees.

Pensions First’s private cloud architecture is based on Windows Server 2012 R2 and uses Mellanox RDMA-enabled IB and Ethernet interconnects to provide a performance and cost effective solution.

The platform supports both SQL Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 and utilizes RDMA offloading, using both SMB Direct and Live Migration over RDMA, which accelerates data analysis. It also provides true multi-tenanted and isolated partitions through the use of NVGRE, which provides security for Pensions First and its clients.

“We’re pleased to see a customer such as Pensions First take advantage of the trailblazing functionality of Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V, as well as SQL Server 2012, and gaining speed, efficiency, and flexibility with Mellanox RDMA-based IB and Ethernet interconnects,” said Chris Phillips, partner director PM, Microsoft Corp.

“By using Mellanox’s innovative and cost effective interconnect solutions, Pensions First was able to converge all of its data communications into a single, protected and cost-effective fabric,” said Nick Francis, CTO, Pensions First. “We are thrilled with the performance and flexibility that RDMA affords us, and it’s a superb platform to underpin our private cloud infrastructure.”

“Mellanox continues to innovate and deliver the most advanced data center interconnect solutions to Windows-based users,” said Kevin Deierling, VP marketing, Mellanox. “Our recent RDMA and NVGRE offload technologies deployed in Pensions First private cloud infrastructure enable faster data analytics and a lower cost.”

End-to-end VPI technology includes the SwitchX-based SX6036 and SX6012 switches and ConnectX-3/ConnectX-3 Pro 10/40/56Gb/s adapters that provide greater performance when running enterprise data center applications. VPI solutions are available and include OEM support from vendors as Dell, HP, and IBM.

As part of the deal, the Mellanox interconnect solutions were provided by Mellanox’s local PartnerFIRST reseller, iSys Capital Technologies, in low-latency technology infrastructures, who worked with both vendors and client to ensure the implementation.