Intel Ethernet Cloud White Paper

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The increasing compute capacity of
servers drives the need for larger
amounts of data throughput to maximize
platform-utilization levels. In organizations
that have standardized on GbE server
adapters, that need for connectivity and
bandwidth can lead to very high physical
port counts per server, and the use of
8–12 GbE server adapter ports per server
is not uncommon.
In particular, many network architects
continue to follow the recommendation
of deploying multiple GbE physical port
connections for a host of VMs on the
server, as well as dedicated ports for
live migration and the service console.
Provisioning high numbers of GbE server
adapter ports per server increases
network cost and complexity, making
inefcient use of cable management
and power and cooling resources in
the data center.
A simple way to reduce the number of
physical connections per server is to
consolidate multiple GbE ports to a smaller
number of 10GbE ports, in those areas
where it makes sense. In many cases,
network architects may determine that
GbE ports are valuable in some instances
and choose to maintain a combination of
GbE and 10GbE ports for LAN trafc. In
particular, management ports are often
kept on dedicated GbE ports, and some
hypervisor vendors suggest separate
physical ports for VM migration.
Figure 1 shows network connectivity
analogous to that in Figure 0, but taking
advantage of 10GbE to reduce the number
of physical ports needed for LAN trafc.
Such consolidation can dramatically reduce
cabling and switch requirements for lower
equipment cost, power and cooling
requirements, and management complexity.
Throughout this paper, the
progression of numbered network diagrams
builds on one another, implementing each
best practice on top of the previous one.
The use of 10GbE as opposed to GbE
enables the following advantages:
• . Fewer
physical ports and cables make the
environment simpler to manage
and maintain, reducing the risk of
misconfiguring while using less power.
• . Fewer
server adapters and port connections
reduce the points of potential failure,
for lower maintenance requirements
and overall risk.
• . The
10GbE topology increases the overall
bandwidth available for each VM, better
enabling bandwidth elasticity during
peak workloads.
10GbE also takes better advantage of
overall bandwidth resources because
multiple logical connections per server
adapter can share excess headroom
in terms of throughput. Redundancy
is provided by the use of two 10GbE
connections on a standard two-port
10GbE server adapter.
Moreover, features that provide high
performance with multi-core servers
and optimizations for virtualization make
10GbE the clear connectivity medium of
choice for the data center.
iSCSI
Network
10GbE Switch
VM nVM 2VM 1VM nVM 2VM 1
Server 1Server n
Fibre Channel Host
Bus Adapter (Storage)
10GbE Server
Adapter (LAN)
GbE LAN on
Motherboard
(Management)
Console
Aggregation
10GbE Switch
Aggregation
GbE Switch
Top-of-Rack Fibre
Channel Switch
Director Class
Fibre Channel
Switch
iSCSI, Fibre
Channel SAN
WAN
A
t
ion
a
tio
n
Patch PanelPatch Panel
Consolidating Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) server adapters onto 10GbE reduces the number of
ports and cables in the network, lowering complexity and costs.
4
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