Intel® Ethernet X520 Server Adapters
Intel’s new family of Intel® Ethernet X520 Server Adapters are the most flexible and scalable Ethernet adapters for today’s demanding data center environments. Data center networks are being pushed to their limits. The escalating deployments of servers with multi-core processors and demanding applications such as High Performance Computing (HPC), database clusters, and video-on-demand are driving the need for 10 Gigabit connections. Customers require flexible and scalable I/O solutions to meet the rigorous requirements of running mission-critical applications in virtualized and unified storage environments.
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Best for I/O Virtualization
The Intel 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller includes Intel® Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel® VT-c) to deliver outstanding I/O performance in virtualized environments. Intel VT-c includes hardware optimizations that help reduce I/O bottlenecks and improve server performance. Intel VT-c consists of two components: Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and Virtual Machine Direct Connect (VMDc). VMDq improves data processing by offloading the network traffic sorting and queuing functionality from the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) to the Ethernet controller. VMDc provides direct connectivity to VMs to provide near-native performance and greater VM scalability. VMDc also enables VM migration between physical servers, providing greater flexibility and mobility.
Unified Networking and Storage
The family of Intel Ethernet X520 server adapters lowers your data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by providing the ability to route LAN and SAN traffic over a single fabric.
Support for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
FCoE encapsulates Fiber Channel frames over standard Ethernet networks, enabling Fiber Channel to take advantage of 10 GbE networks while preserving its native protocol. The X520 server adapters offer FCoE hardware acceleration to provide performance comparable to FC HBAs. The new server adapters support Data Center Bridging, also known as Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), which allows customers to configure traffic classes and priorities to deliver a lossless Ethernet fabric. An Intel Ethernet X520 server adapter reduces TCO by eliminating redundant fabrics and saves the cost of expensive FC HBAs and FC switch ports.
Support for iSCSI
The server adapters provide complete support for proven native OS and VMM iSCSI initiators as well as iSCSI boot. Historically, CRC32C computation has degraded system performance, but now with the CRC instruction set included in the latest Intel® Xeon® processors, CRC validation is possible with minimal impact to network throughput while delivering superior data integrity. The new Intel Ethernet family of X520 server adapters do it all:
10 Gigabit LAN, FCoE, and iSCSI; truly delivering on the promise of unified networking.
