Intel Ethernet Cloud White Paper



Moving business-critical workloads to
cloud infrastructures, especially by
regulated or otherwise particularly
security-conscious industries, requires
hardened cloud infrastructures. At
the same time, they must deliver the
exibility that is at the core of agility
and elasticity requirements that draw
organizations to cloud computing.
VM nVM 2VM 1VM nVM 2VM 1
Server 1Server n
Fibre Channel
Host Bus Adapter
(Storage)
GbE Server
Adapters (LAN)
GbE LAN on
Motherboard
(Management)
Patch PanelPatch Panel
Console
Aggregation
GbE Switch
Top-of-Rack
Fibre Channel
Switch
iSCSI
Network
GbE Switch
Director Class
Fibre Channel
Switch
iSCSI, Fibre
Channel SAN
r
)
A
Aggregation
GbE Switch
WAN
Many networks use Gigabit Ethernet for LAN traffic, which drives up port count, and
Fibre Channel for storage traffic, which adds the complexity of another fabric. Similar issues exist
with iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) SANs, as well, albeit on an Ethernet fabric.
Intel® Ethernet 10Gb Server
Adapters support trusted,
standards-based, open
solutions for cloud computing:
• .
Virtualized I/O enabled by
intelligent ofoads
• . Broad
OS support and dynamic
conguration across ports and
virtual machines
• . Thirty years of
Ethernet products that “just work”

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Building out virtualized and cloud
infrastructures does not inherently reduce
complexity. On the contrary, structured
design practices are needed, which can
eliminate the need for multiple fabrics and
enable many cables and connections to be
converged onto a single fabric type and
potentially a single wire.
Figure 0 illustrates an initial-state
environment before such practices have
been implemented, where a proliferation
of server network ports, cables, and
switches can counter the cost and
exibility benets organizations set
out to achieve with cloud computing.
Infrastructure complexity and associated
costs often arise as a result of organic
development from prior topologies, and
they can be readily addressed using the
best practices outlined in this paper.


IT organizations must simultaneously
meet the demands for increased capacity
that their customers demand while
also ensuring the level of service those
customers require to ensure business
continuity. Scalability and quality of
service (QoS) requirements dened by
network policies create new networking
challenges for cloud architects to address.
These include I/O bottlenecks and
contention for network resources
brought about by large numbers of virtual
machines (VMs) per host, as well as the
need to handle usage peaks from large
numbers of customers.
3
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