Intel X710-DA4 Ethernet Converged Network Adapter

Dual and Quad-port 10GbE adapters with Hardware Optimization and Offloads for the Rapid Provisioning of Networks in an Agile Data Center

The Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X710 addresses the demanding needs of an agile data center by providing unmatched features for both server and network virtualization, flexibility for LAN and SAN networks and proven, reliable performance.

The Intel Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapters. These adapters are the foundation for server connectivity, providing broad interoperability, critical performance optimizations 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.

Optimization
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.

All Intel Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapters include these feature-rich technologies

Flexible and Scalable I/O for Virtualized Infrastructures
Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), delivers outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. I/O bottlenecks are reduced through intelligent offloads such as Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and Flexible Port Partitioning, using SR-IOV 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 CPU usage in virtualized environments.

• With up to 128 Virtual Functions (VF)s, 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 a single port (function) to be partitioned into smaller slices that can be allocated to specific VMs or guests, via a standard interface

Intel Ethernet Adaptive Virtual Function (Intel Ethernet AVF)
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 Virtualization Overlays (NVO)
Network virtualization has changed the way networking is done in the data center, delivering accelerations across a wide range of tunneling 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 10GbE bandwidth across multiple dedicated network resources, ensuring balanced QoS by giving each assigned virtual controller equal access to 10Gbs of bandwidth.

Network administrators can also rate limit each of these services to control how much of the 10GbE pipe is available to each process

Greater Intelligence and Performance for NFV
A combination of hardware and software acceleration features, such as Application Device Queues (ADq) and Dynamic Device Personalization (DDP), enable customizable packet filtering. The acceleration features, along with enhanced Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), support advanced packet forwarding and high efficient packet processing for both Cloud and Network Functions Virtualization (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 CPU 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 CPU cores.

Steering traffic into specific queues can eliminate context switching required within the CPU. As a result, Intel Ethernet FD significantly increases the number of transactions per second and reduces latency for cloud applications like memcached