Intel Server Board S2400BB

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Intel® Server Board S2400BB TPS

Revision 2.0

5. Technology Support

5.1 Intel

Virtualization Technology – Intel

VT-x/VT-d/VT-c

Intel

Virtualization Technology consists of three components which are integrated and interrelated, but which

address different areas of Virtualization.

• Intel

Virtualization Technology (VT-x) is processor-related and provides capabilities needed to

provide a hardware assist to a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM).

• Intel

Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) is primarily concerned with virtualizing I/O

efficiently in a VMM environment. This would generally be a chipset I/O feature, but in the Second

Generation Intel

Core™ Processor Family there is an Integrated I/O unit embedded in the

processor, and the IIO is also enabled for VT-d.

• Intel

Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (VT-c) is primarily concerned I/O hardware assist

features, complementary to but independent of VT-d.

Intel

VT-x is designed to support multiple software environments sharing same hardware resources. Each

software environment may consist of OS and applications. The Intel

Virtualization Technology features can be

enabled or disabled in the BIOS setup. The default behavior is disabled.

Intel

VT-d is supported jointly by the Intel

Xeon

Processor E5 4600/2600/2400/1600 Product Families and

the C600 chipset. Both support DMA remapping from inbound PCI Express* memory Guest Physical Address

(GPA) to Host Physical Address (HPA). PCI devices are directly assigned to a virtual machine leading to a

robust and efficient virtualization.

The Intel

S4600/S2600/S2400/S1600/S1400 Server Board Family BIOS publishes the DMAR table in the

ACPI Tables. For each DMA Remapping Engine in the platform, one exact entry of DRHD (DMA Remapping

Hardware Unit Definition) structure is added to the DMAR. The DRHD structure in turn contains a Device

Scope structure that describes the PCI endpoints and/or sub-hierarchies handled by the particular DMA

Remapping Engine.

Similarly, there are reserved memory regions typically allocated by the BIOS at boot time. The BIOS marks

these regions as either reserved or unavailable in the system address memory map reported to the OS. Some

of these regions can be a target of DMA requests from one or more devices in the system, while the OS or

executive is active. The BIOS reports each such memory region using exactly one RMRR (Reserved Memory

Region Reporting) structure in the DMAR. Each RMRR has a Device Scope listing the devices in the system

that can cause a DMA request to the region.

For more information on the DMAR table and the DRHD entry format, refer to the Intel

Virtualization

Technology for Directed I/O Architecture Specification. For more general information about VT-x, VT-d, and

VT-c, a good reference is Enabling Intel

Virtualization Technology Features and Benefits White Paper.

5.2 Intel

Intelligent Power Node Manager

Data centers are faced with power and cooling challenges that are driven by increasing numbers of servers

deployed and server density in the face of several data center power and cooling constraints. In this type of

environment, Information Technology (IT) needs the ability to monitor actual platform power consumption and

control power allocation to servers and racks in order to solve specific data center problems including the

following issues.

IT Challenge

Requirement

Over-allocation of power

• Ability to monitor actual power consumption

• Control capability that can maintain a power budget to enable

dynamic power allocation to each server

Under-population of rack space

• Control capability that can maintain a power budget to enable

increased rack population.

High energy costs

• Control capability that can maintain a power budget to ensure that a

set energy cost can be achieved