Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X550-T2

10 GbE for the Broad Market

The Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X550 is the newest innovation in Intel’s leadership to drive 10 GbE into the broad server market. This adapter hosts Intel’s latest Ethernet silicon, the Intel® Ethernet Controller X550, a low cost single-chip 10GBASE-T solution for today’s server platforms.

Simplify the Transition to 10 GbE

With 10GBASE-T, migration to 10 GbE is dramatically simplified with backward compatibility for your existing GbE network infrastructure. Install an X550 adapter into a server and the auto-negotiation between 1 GbE and 10GbE provides the necessary backwards compatibility that most customers require for a smooth transition and easy migration to 10 GbE. When time and budget allows, 10GBASE-T switches can be added any time to experience the full benefits of 10 GbE. 10GBASE-T uses the copper twisted-pair cables that are very familiar to IT professionals today. It is all you know and love about 1000BASE-T. The knowledge, training, and investment in BASE-T are preserved. 10GBASE-Tis the easiest and most versatile 10GbE interface that can be deployed anywhere in your data center. Its flexible reach from 1 meter to 100 meters supports the latest network architectures including Top of Rack (ToR), Middle of Row (MoR), and End of Row (EoR).

10 GbE Performance at Low Cost and Low Power

The new Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X550 is the lowest cost way to deploy 10 GbE in your data-center today. The Intel X550 uses low cost CAT 6 and CAT 6a cabling. Chances are this cabling already exists in the data center. A way for Intel to reduce cost and power is to integrate components into a single-chip solution. Why is integration important? First, integration translates to lower power. This means no active heat sink and reduces the per-port power consumption.Second, integration also means a lower cost per port, because two separate components are not needed.When cabling is accounted for, cost efficiencies realized from a single part mean 10GBASE-T is the lowest cost media to deploy.With lower cost and power, 10GBASE-T is ideal for broad deployment. 10GBASE-T is an option for every rack and tower server in the data center. The new Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X550 (CNA X550family) provides bandwidth-intensive applications with highly affordable 10 GbE network performance and cost-effective RJ45 connectivity for distances up to 100 meters.

Exciting New Data Center Models

More than just a 10 times per-port increase in performance by using the CNA X550 family versus a standard 1 GbE adapter opens doors for exciting new usage models, including unified networking, I/O virtualization, and flexible port partitioning.

A Complete Unified Network Solution

Converging data and storage onto one fabric eliminates the need for multiple adapters and cables per server. Furthermore, 10 GbE provides the bandwidth to converge these multiple fabrics into a single wire. A key capability that makes all this possible is traffic class separation provided by Data Center Bridging (DCB). DCB provides a collection of standards for additional QoS functionality such as lossless delivery, congestion notification,priority-based flow control, and priority groups. This enables the CNA X550 family to provide a one-wire solution with virtual pipes for the different classes of traffic:

• Data: best effort delivery of standard LAN traffic.
• Storage: NAS or SAN including lossless FCoE and iSCSI.
• Management: Guaranteed connectivity of data center IP management.

Unified Networking Principles

Intel’s unified networking solutions are built on the principles that have made us successful in Ethernet:

• Open architecture integrates networking with the server, enabling IT managers to reduce complexity and overhead while enabling a flexible and scalable data center network.
• Intelligent offloads lower cost and power while delivering the application performance that customers expect.
• Proven unified networking is built on trusted Intel Ethernet technology,enabling customers to deploy FCoE or iSCSI with the same quality used in their traditional Ethernet network.

Intel’s unified networking solutions are enabled through a combination of Intel Ethernet products along with network and storage protocols integrated in the operating systems. This combination provides proven reliability with the performance that data center administrators around the world have come to expect from Intel.

Best Choice for Server Virtualization

Virtualization changes server resource deployment and management by running multiple applications and operating systems on a single physical server. With Intel® Virtualization Technology for connectivity (VT-c), the CNA X550 family delivers outstanding I/O performance and QoS in virtualized data centers and cloud environments.I/O virtualization advances network connectivity used in today’s servers to more efficient models by providing FPP, multiple Tx/Rx queues, Tx queue rate-limiting, and on-controller QoS functionality that is useful for both virtual and non-virtual server deployments.The CNA X550 family reduces I/O bottlenecks by providing intelligent offload of networking traffic per VM, enabling near-native performance and VM scalability. The host-based virtualization technologies include:

• VMDq for emulated path: NIC-based VM queue sorting enabling efficient hypervisor-based switching.
• SR-IOV for direct assignment: NIC based isolation and switching for various virtual station instances enabling optimal CPU usage in virtualized environment.

Additionally, the CNA X550 family provides virtual bridging support that delivers both host-side and switch-side control and management of virtualized I/O as well as the following modes of virtualized operation:

• VEPA: IEEE 802.1Qbg support for Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator.
• VEB: Virtual Ethernet Bridge support with Intel VT.

Networking Virtualization

Network virtualization is the next big trend in creating an agile data center.The X550 CNA family of adapters are ready to help take you to the next level.

• VXLAN and NVGRE offloads:These stateless offloads preserve application performance for overlay networks. With these offloads it ispossible to distribute network traffic across a CPU core.
• Preserves application performance in network virtualized environment.

Flexible Port Partitioning (FPP)

By taking advantage of the PCI-SIG*SR-IOV specification, FPP enables virtual Ethernet controllers that can be used by a Linux* host directly and/or assigned directly to virtual machines for hypervisor virtual switch bypass. FPP enables the assignment of up to 64 Linux host processes or virtual machines per port to virtual functions.An administrator can use FPP to control the partitioning of the bandwidth across multiple virtual functions. FPP can also provide balanced QoS by giving each assigned virtual function equal access to 10 Gb/s of bandwidth.

The combination of 10 GbE and unified networking helps organizations overcome connectivity challenges and simplify the data center infrastructure. 10 GbE provides a simple, well understood fabric for virtualized data centers, one that helps reduce cost and complexity as the number of Virtual Machines (VMs) continue to grow.