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A Complete, Unified Networking Solution
Converging data and storage onto one fabric eliminates
the need for multiple adapters, cables, and switches.
Furthermore both 10 and 40 gigabit Ethernet provides
the bandwidth to converge these multiple fabrics onto a
single wire. A key capability that makes all this possible is
trac class separation provided by Data Center Bridging
(DCB)
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—providing a one-wire solution with virtual pipes
for the dierent classes of trac:
• Data: Best eort delivery of standard LAN trac
• Storage: Lossless network for FCoE and iSCSI
• Management: Guaranteed connectivity of data center
IP management
One Adapter, One Price
With the Intel adapters, iSCSI and FCoE support are
included in the price of an adapter. There is no need to
purchase multiple adapters or additional licensing for an
XL710 adapter. It’s simple and easy. Everything you need
to unify your networking is included in a single SKU. One
adapter, one price.
Power Savings
Power eciency is critical to IT specialists as energy
consumption is a real OpEx concern.
• Lowest Power Consumption: The new generation of
XL710 adapters are power misers. They deliver double
the throughput with only half the power of the previous
X520 generation.
 Reduces power
consumption during periods of low data activity. Energy
is used to maintain the physical layer transmitters in a
“ready state” to transmit data on the wire. During periods
of low data trac, EEE sends a low-power-idle signal to
put the transmitters into a “low power state” saving power
and cost. When data needs to be sent, EEE sends a normal
idle signal to wake up the transmit system before data is
due to be sent so there is no degradation of performance.
Server Virtualization
With Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT), the XL710
family of adapters deliver outstanding I/O performance
in virtualized server environments. They reduce I/O
bottlenecks by providing intelligent ooads for networking
trac per virtual machine (VM), enabling near-native
performance and VM scalability. The host-based
virtualization technologies supported by Intel VT include:
 Adapter-based VM Queue
sorting enabling ecient hypervisor-based switching
• SR-IOV for Direct Assignment: Adapter-based isolation
and switching for various virtual station instances enabling
optimal CPU usage in virtualized environments
Additionally, XL710 adapters provide Virtual Bridging
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support that delivers both host-side and switch-side
control and management of virtualized I/O as well as
the following modes of virtualized operation:
• VEPA
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: IEEE 802.1Qbg support for Virtual Ethernet
Port Aggregator
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• VEB: Virtual Ethernet Bridge support via Intel VT
Network Virtualization
Network virtualization is the next big trend in creating an
agile data center. The family of XL710 adapters are ready
to help you take that next step.
 These stateless
ooads preserve application performance for overlay
networks. With these ooads it is possible to distribute
network trac across CPU cores.
At the same time XL710 ooads LSO, GSO, and checksum
from the host software reducing CPU overhead.

Flow Director is an advanced trac steering capability
built into the XL710 controller. It consists of a large
number of ow anity lters that direct received packets
by their ows to queues for classication, load balancing,
and matching between ows and CPU cores. It eliminates
context switching required within the CPU. As a result, Flow
Director signicantly increases the number of transactions
per second and reduces latency for cloud applications
like Memcached.
Intelligent Offloads
The Intel® Xeon® processor family has demonstrated
increased computing performance and increased integration
of key server subsystems generation after generation.
To ooad is to leverage the ever-escalating computing
power of the Intel Xeon processor where appropriate and
implement complementary accelerations in the network
controller—this is what Intel refers to as “intelligent
ooads.” By employing a balanced hybrid of compute and
ooad, intelligent ooads are able to achieve the optimized
point of performance and eciency. This is most notably
observed in the following usage models:
 Demonstrates leading performance
vs. TOE solutions without restricting feature usage (TOE
usage usually requires that key features be disabled).
Supported stateless ooads include Checksum, TSO,
VMDq, and RSS.
Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapters XL710
With Support for QSFP+ Connections
Network Connectivity
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