Converging SAN and LAN Infrastructure with Fibre Channel over Ethernet for Efficient, Cost-Effective Date Centers

Converging SAN and LAN Infrastructure with Fibre Channel over Ethernet for Efcient, Cost-Effective Data Centers Page 7
FCoE-Capable Data Center Switches from Cisco
For either of these two deployment models, the Cisco Nexus
5000 Series offers feature-rich Layer 2 data center switches
with advanced support for unied data center fabric. In addition
to FCoE support over Enhanced 10 Gigabit Ethernet, the Cisco
Nexus 5000 Series delivers advanced lossless transmission
capabilities, taking advantage of the Enhanced Ethernet
capabilities mentioned previously, helping ensure the delity of
converged trafc. The switches also have a cut-through design
that can deliver adapter-to-switch-to-adapter latency of less than
10 microseconds and port-to-port latency of approximately 3
microseconds, independent of packet size. The switches include
ports at the rear for consistency with data center servers, allowing
shorter and simpler cable runs within racks and reducing cost and
copper waste. Front-to-back cooling is also consistent with server
cooling designs, helping facilitate rack deployment and increase
data center cooling efciency.
10 Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity from Intel
Intel
®
10 Gigabit Server Adapters for PCI Express
®
are designed
to meet the throughput requirements of bandwidth-hungry
implementations, such as those associated with unied data
center fabric. Intel is delivering FCoE initiator support for Red
Hat Enterprise Linux
®
and Microsoft Windows
®
Server, playing
a pioneering role in bringing 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
for FCoE to the data center. The design of these adapters also
incorporates DCB capability to provide the lossless, no-drop
behavior required by FCoE. These adapters are optimized
for multi-core processors and virtualized environments, with
support for multiple queues that distribute I/O processing among
multiple processor cores and help alleviate I/O bottlenecks
between virtual machines. Receive-side scaling (for Windows)
and scalable I/O (for Linux) intelligently use multiple queues to
increase the efciency of direction of packet ows to specic
processor cores for handling. Virtual Machine Device queue
(VMDq) technology
3
ofoads data sorting and data copying from
the Virtual Machine Monitor software layer to the hardware,
improving overall throughput and CPU
utilization on virtualized servers. Extended
Message-Signaled Interrupt (MSI-X)
technology passes interrupts from multiple
queues to particular processor cores
simultaneously, enabling better load
balancing across cores for better CPU
utilization and lower latency.
Intel
®
10 Gigabit Server Adapters offer these features:
• Support for Enhanced Ethernet features such as Priority Flow Control that provide no-drop
behavior on Ethernet
• Load balancing across CPUs for increased performance on multiprocessor and multi-core systems
• Virtual machine device queues (VMDq) for efcient routing of packets in a virtualized environment
• Intel
®
I/O Acceleration Technology for more efcient data movement through the processor
4
• Capability to toggle between interrupt aggregation and nonaggregation modes for low latency
with diverse data
• Network packet handling without waiting or buffer overow for efcient packet prioritization
• Support for eight-lane connectivity using standard and low-prole PCI Express
®
slots for fast,
efcient data transfer
• Single- and dual-port congurations for copper and ber networks
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series offers these features:
• Cisco Data Center Ethernet (DCE) feature suite for lossless
congestion management
• FCoE support for I/O consolidation
• Flexible connectivity, including 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre
Channel, for simplied in-rack cabling
• Redundant, hot-swappable power and cooling systems for
high availability
• Flexible management, including Cisco Data Center Network
Manager (DCNM) (after rst customer shipment [FCS]), Cisco
Fabric Manager, a command-line interface (CLI), Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) support, and Extensible Markup
Language (XML) support, for high compatibility
• Rear-facing ports and front-to-back cooling for consistency with
server designs