Intel^® Ethernet X520 10 Gigabit Dual Port -x/k Mezzanine Card for Dell PowerEdge Blade Servers

Intel^®  VT for Connectivity (VT-c) is a suite of hardware assists that reduces I/O bottlenecks in a virtualized server and improves performance, flexibility and virtual machine scalability. Using emulation mode or direct access mode, and together, improves overall system performance by lowering the I/O overhead in a virtualized environment. This optimizes CPU usage, reduces system latency, and improves I/O throughput. Intel VT-c includes:

Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq): In the emulation mode, VMDq optimized network performance by offloading data sorting an copying from the software virtual switch in the VMM to the Intel Ethernet 82599 10 Gigabit controller. This configuration is best suited for a large number of VMs running standard applications that have limited bandwidth and latency requirements. SR-IOV: In direct access mode, industry standards-based SR-IOV provides direct VM connectivity and data protection across VM. It allows the data to bypass the software virtual switch and provides near-native performance. It assigns either physical or virtual I/O ports to individual VM directly. This technology is best suited for applications that demand the highest I/O throughput and lowers latency performance such as data base, storage, financial and other applications.

The Intel^®  Ethernet X520 10 GbE -x/k Mezzanine Card provides high-performing, dual port connectivity in a multi-core platform as well as in a virtualized environment.

In a multi-core platform, Intel®  Ethernet Mezzanine cards support different technologies, such as Intel®  QuickData Technology, MSI-X and Low Latency Interrupts, that help accelerate the data across the platform, thereby improving application response times. The I/O technologies on a multi-core platform make use of the multiple queues and multiple interrupt vectors available on the Intel®  Ethernet network controller. The Intel®  Ethernet 82599 network controller uses queues and interrupt vectors to help in load-balancing the data and interrupts among themselves in order to lower the load on the processors and improve overall system performance.

Intel^®  Ethernet 10 Gigabit dual port Mezzanine cards provides the easiest, most reliable, and most cost-effective way to connect blade servers to iSCSI SANs.

Intel Ethernet 10 X520 Gigabit Mezzanine cards use native iSCSI initiators integrated in the operating system to simplify iSCSI deployment and configuration without the need for proprietary software. Customer trusted, native initiators have existed for years and have been tested with multiple generations of operating systems and storage hardware and are integrated with standard OS configuration tools and partner-provided tools. Intel Ethernet blade server mezzanine cards include hardware-based iSCSI acceleration features that do not require offloading to a proprietary TCP/IP stack. Taking its place to reduce latency and lower CPU utilization, iSCSI acceleration uses Large Send Offload, Receive-side Coalescing, and Transmit Send Offloads. To improve efficiency, it is optimized for multicore processors with MSI-X and Receive-side Scaling, scale I/O processing across multiple CPU cores. DMA, DCA, header splitting improve network data processing efficiency, and DCB to provide support for multiple traffic classes, which can be prioritized for iSCSI traffic. Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity accelerates iSCSI traffic in VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V R2 environments. Intel works closely with leading VMM vendors to ensure compatibility and outstanding performance with their native initiators. Intel Ethernet Server Adapters support the native iSCSI initiators in ESX and Hyper-V and was the first to be certified with VMware’s ESX initiator.