2 Port Intel XL710-QDA2 40 Gigabit SFP+ PCIe Network Server Adaptor

Intel 2 Port 40 Gigabit SFP+ PCIe Network Adaptor

The Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter XL710 offers both single and dual port 40GbE, and is backwards compatible to 10GbE.
The Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter XL710 is part of the Intel Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapters. These adapters are the foundation for server connectivity, providing broad interoperability, critical performance optimisations, and increased agility for Telecommunications, Cloud, and Enterprise IT network solutions.

• Interoperability: Multiple speeds and media types for broad compatibility backed by extensive testing and validation.
• Optimisation: Intelligent offloads and accelerators to unlock network performance in servers with Intel’ Xeon’ processors.
• Agility: Both Kernel and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) drivers for scalable packet processing.

Built on more than 35 years of continuous Ethernet innovations, the Intel’ Ethernet 700 Series delivers networking performance across a wide range of network port speeds through intelligent offloads, sophisticated packet processing, and quality open source drivers.

Flexible and Scalable I/O for Virtualised Infrastructures

Inter Virtualisation Technology (Inter VT), delivers Outstanding I/O performance in virtualised server environments.
I/O bottlenecks are reduced through intelligent Offloads such as Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and Flexible Port Partitioning, using SR-IOV with a common Virtual Function driver for networking traffic per Virtual Machine (VM), enabling near-native performance and VM scalability Host-based features supported include:

VMDq for Emulated Path: VMDq, enables a hypervisor to represent a single network port as multiple network ports that can be assigned to the individual VMS. Traffic handling is offloaded to the network controller, delivering the benefits of port partitioning with little to no administrative overhead by the IT staff
SR-IOV for Direct Assignment: Adapter-based isolation and switching for various virtual station instances enables optimal CPI_I usage in virtualised environments.

• Up to 12B VFS, each VF can support a unique and separate data path for I/O related functions within the PCI Express hierarchy.
• Use Of SR-IOV with a networking device, for example, allows the bandwidth Of single port (function) to be partitioned into smaller slices that Can be allocated to specific VMS or guests, via a standard interface.

Inter Ethernet Adaptive Virtual Function (Inter EthernetAVF): A virtual function driver that eases SR-IOV hardware upgrades or changes, and preserves base mode functionality in hardware and software Customers deploying mass-scale VMS or Containers for their network infrastructure now have a Common Virtual Function (VF) driver. This driver supports a Base Mode and advanced set of features on the Intel Ethernet 700 Series.

Enhanced Network Virtualisation Overlays (NVO)

Network virtualisation has changed the way networking is done in the data centre, delivering accelerations across a wide range of tunnelling methods.
VXLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE, MPLS. and VXLAN-GPE with NSH Offloads: These stateless offloads preserve application performance for overlay networks, and the network traffic can be distributed across CPU cores, increasing network throughput.

Flexible Port Partitioning (FPP)

FPP leverages the PCI-SIG SR-IOV specification. Virtual controllers can be used by the Linux host directly and/ or assigned to virtual machines.

• Assign up to 63 Linux host processes or virtual machines per port to virtual functions.
• Control the partitioning of per port bandwidth across multiple dedicated network resources, ensuring balanced QoS by giving each assigned virtual controller equal access to the ports bandwidth.

Network administrators can also rate limit each of these services to control how much of the pipe is available to each process.

Greater Intelligence and Performance for NFV

Dynamic Device Personalisation (DDP) customizable packet filtering, along with enhanced Data Plane.
The Development Kit (DPDK), support advanced packet forwarding and high efficient packet processing for both Cloud and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) workloads.

• DDP enables a method to change the packet processing pipeline by applying a profile package to the Intel Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapter at runtime—resulting in improvements in throughput, latency and reduced CPI_I loads.
• DPDK provides a programming framework for Intel processors and enables faster development of high- speed data packet networking applications.

Advanced Traffic Steering

Intel’ Ethernet Flow Director (Intel’ Ethernet FD) is an advanced traffic steering capability built into the adapter. It consists of a large number of flow affinity filters that direct receive packets by their flows to queues for classification, load balancing, and matching between flows and CPI-I cores.
Steering traffic into specific queues can eliminate context switching required within the CPI-I. As a result, Intel Ethernet FD significantly increases the number of transactions per second and reduces latency for cloud applications like memcached.

Features

• Supports 4x10GbE, Ix40GbE or 2x40GbE configurations.
• PCI Express (PCIe).
• Exceptional low power adapters.
• Network Virtualisation offloads including VXLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE, MPLS. and VXLAN-GPE with Network Service Headers (NSH).
• Intel Ethernet Flow Director for hardware based application traffic steering.
• Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) optimised for efficient packet processing.
• Excellent small packet performance for network appliances and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV).
• Intelligent offloads to enable high performance on servers with Intel Xeon’ Processors.
• I/O virtualisation innovations for maximum performance in a visualised server.