Maximizing File Transfer Performance Using 10Gb Ethernet and Virtualization

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The Results
This case study and the results obtained
through the collaborative efforts of FedEx
and Intel engineers suggest a number of

in the data center can be maximized,
depending on the tools and virtualization
techniques used, as well as the hardware

The most important performance-related
considerations, based on the observations
and data results obtained during testing,



width and speed provide sufficient I/O



SFP+ form factor provides a single
physical interface standard that can
cover the application range—from the
lowest cost, lowest power, and shortest
reach networking available to the
longest reach situations that may be

on a port-by-port basis can provide a
cost-effective and flexible approach

this new cabling approach, 10G can be
cost effective today, as compared to
commonly deployed usage models with



each of the recommended settings
detailed in the body of this case study
and determined that these settings
either improved performance or were


the OS, VMM, and applications take full



benchmarks can be useful tools to
evaluate subsystem performance,
they can be misleading for estimating




Cryptography can be a bottleneck, so

required, choose an implementation that


Configuration using multiple VMs will


In some cases multi-vCPU VM is better

Moving directly from your physical
server configurations and tunings to the
nearest equivalent VM is an effective
starting point, but ultimately may not

features, such as VMDq and NetQueue,
will perform better when multiple VMs
are being used and there are no system
bottlenecks, such as PCIe bandwidth

This case study demonstrates that it
is possible to achieve close to 10G line



testing methods described to validate
the 10G network you are building and to

results detailed in this case study make it
clear that tool choices, usage models, and

than whether the application is running in
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