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Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM BladeCente

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Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh)

for IBM BladeCenter

IBM BladeCenter at-a-glance guide

The Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM® BladeCenter® delivers the

industry's lowest latency performance of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with stateless offloads for

converged fabrics in enterprise data centers, high-performance computing, and embedded environments.

Financial services, cluster databases, web infrastructure, and cloud computing are just a few example

applications that will achieve significant throughput and latency improvements resulting in faster access,

real-time response, and increased number of users per server. The adapter is based on Mellanox

ConnectX-2 EN technology, which improves network performance by increasing available bandwidth to

the CPU, especially in virtualized server environments.

Figure 1 shows the adapter.

Figure 1. Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter

Did you know

New enhancements such as Data Center Ethernet (DCE) are being added to Ethernet for better I/O

consolidations. The InfiniBand Trade Association's (IBTA) RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)

technology provides efficient low-latency RDMA transport over Layer 2 Ethernet. The RoE software stack

maintains existing and future application compatibility for bandwidth and latency-sensitive clustering

applications. With link-level interoperability in existing Ethernet infrastructure, network administrators can

leverage existing data center fabric management solutions with this adapter.

Summary of content (10 pages)

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򔻐򗗠򙳰 ® Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter IBM BladeCenter at-a-glance guide The Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM® BladeCenter® delivers the industry's lowest latency performance of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with stateless offloads for converged fabrics in enterprise data centers, high-performance computing, and embedded environments.
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Part number information The part number to order this card is shown in Table 1. Table 1.
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Quality of service Resource allocation per application or per VM is provided by the advanced QoS supported by ConnectX-2 EN. Service levels for multiple traffic types can be based on IETF DiffServ or IEEE 802.1p/Q, along with the Data Center Bridging enhancements, allowing system administrators to prioritize traffic by application, virtual machine, or protocol.
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Additional CPU offloads:       RDMA over Converged Ethernet support FC checksum offload VMDirect Path support Traffic steering across multiple cores Intelligent interrupt coalescence Compliant to Microsoft RSS and NetDMA Hardware-based I/O virtualization:       Address translation and protection Dedicated adapter resources and guaranteed isolation Multiple queues per virtual machine Hardware switching between guest OSs Enhanced QoS for vNICs VMware NetQueue support Storage support:  Compli
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Figure 2 shows where the CFFh card is installed in a BladeCenter server. Figure 2. Location on the BladeCenter server planar where the CFFh card is installed Supported BladeCenter chassis and I /O modules IBM BladeCenter chassis support is based on the blade server type in which the expansion card is installed. Consult IBM ServerProven® to see which chassis each blade server type is supported at: http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/.
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In BladeCenter H, the ports of CFFh cards are routed through the midplane to I/O bays 7, 8, 9, and 10 (Figure 3). The BladeCenter HT works in a similar way because the CFFh cards are also routed through the midplane to I/O bays 7, 8, 9, and 10. Figure 3. IBM BladeCenter H I/O topology showing the I/O paths from CFFh expansion cards The Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) requires that two I/O modules be installed in bays 7 and 9 of the BladeCenter H or HT chassis (Table 4). Table 4.
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Popular configurations Figure 4 shows a configuration using the Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) together with two BNT Virtual Fabric 10 Gb Switch Modules. This solution enables two 10 Gbps Ethernet connections from each blade server. Two BNT Virtual Fabric 10 Gb Switch Modules are installed in bay 7 and bay 9 of the BladeCenter H chassis. All connections between the controller, the card, and the switch modules are internal to the chassis. No internal cabling is needed. Figure 4.
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Operating system support The Mellanox 2-port 10Gb Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh) supports the following operating systems:                 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x64 Edition Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Enterprise x64 Edition Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard x64 Edition Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Web x64 Edition Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server with Xen x64 Edition Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server x64 Edition Red Hat Enterpr
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Notices This information was developed for products and services offered in the U.S.A. IBM may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in other countries. Consult your local IBM representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Any reference to an IBM product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that IBM product, program, or service may be used.
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This document was created or updated on June 13, 2011. Send us your comments in one of the following ways: Use the online Contact us review form found at: ibm.com/redbooks Send your comments in an e-mail to:  redbook@us.ibm.com Mail your comments to:  IBM Corporation, International Technical Support Organization Dept. HYTD Mail Station P099 2455 South Road Poughkeepsie, NY 12601-5400 U.S.A.  This document is available online at http://www.ibm.com/redbooks/abstracts/tips0820.html .