Maximizing File Transfer Performance Using 10Gb Ethernet and Virtualization

2
Cost Factors


cabling (sometimes referred to as
10GSFP+Cu or SFP+ Direct Attach cost




1
In existing VMware production
environments, FedEx had used eight
1GbE connections implemented with two
quad-port cards (plus one or two 100/1000
ports for management) in addition to two

pricing, moving the eight 1GbE connections

or 10G Twinax connections is cost effective

actually consume less power than the eight
1GbE connections they replace—providing

Having less cabling typically reduces
instances of wiring errors and lowers



Engineering Trade-offs
Engineering trade-offs are also a

Direct Attach/Twinax 10G cabling has
a maximum reach of seven meters for
passive cables, which affects the physical

servers have to be located within a
seven-meter radius of the 10G switches

However, active cables are available that

feature of the Twinax cable technology is
that it uses exactly the same form-factor
connectors that the industry-standard

technology allows you to select the most

Twinax for short reaches and then move


adapters consume approximately 3W per




is also backwards-compatible with


an excellent technology for migrating
Figure 1.

Figure 2. 
when two 10G connections replace eight 1GbE

from GbE to 10GbE, as IT can use existing


use approximately 10W per port, and
upcoming products will consume even less,
making them suitable for integration onto

Framing the Challenge
File transfer applications are widely used
in production environments to move data
between systems for various purposes
and to replicate data sets across servers
and applications that share these data

scp, and rsync for data replication and

In addition to the considerations
associated with cable consolidation, cost
factors, and the power advantages of



was able to drive 320 Mbps over a 1G


Mbps, despite the potential capabilities of

Plugging a 10G NIC into a server does
not automatically deliver 10 Gbps of




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