• Backward compatible with
multi-speed support for 5/2.5/1G,
10GBASE-T, and 100BASE-T X
• PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 x8
• FCC Class B for EMI
• Network Virtualization offloads
including VxLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE,
MPLS, and VxLAN-GPE with Network
Service Headers (NSH)
• Intel® Ethernet Flow Director
for hardware-based application
traffic steering
• Dynamic Device Personalization
(DDP) enables increased packet
processing efficiency for NFV and
Cloud deployments
• Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)
optimized for efficient
packet processing
• Excellent small packet performance
for network appliances and Network
Functions Virtualization (NFV)
• I/O virtualization innovations for
maximum performance in a
virtualized server
Overview
Simplify technology transitions with the Intel® Ethernet Network
Adapter X710-T2L and X710-T4L. Autonegotiation between port
speeds provides maximum exibility in dual and quad-port 10GBASE-T
congurations. These low-power adapters also support Energy Ecient
Ethernet to eciently reduce power consumption during periods of low
data activity.
The X710-T2L and X710-T4L are part of the Intel® Ethernet 700 Series,
the foundation for server connectivity; providing broad interoperability,
critical performance optimizations, and increased agility for
Communications, Cloud, and Enterprise IT network solutions.
• Interoperability - Multiple speeds and media types for broad
• Optimization - Intelligent ooads and accelerators to unlock
• Agility - Both Kernel and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)
The Intel® Ethernet 700 Series delivers networking performance across
a wide range of network port speeds through intelligent ooads,
sophisticated packet processing, and quality open-source drivers.
compatibility backed by extensive testing and validation.
network performance in servers with Intel® Xeon® processors.
drivers for scalable packet processing.
All Intel® Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapters
include these feature-rich technologies:
Flexible and Scalable I/O for Virtualized
Infrastructures
Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT), delivers
outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server
environments.
I/O bottlenecks are reduced through intelligent ooads
such as Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDQ) and
Flexible Port Partitioning, using SR-IOV with a common
Virtual Function driver for networking trac per Virtual
Machine (VM), enabling near-native performance and
VM scalability. Host-based features supported include:
Flexible Port Partitioning (FPP)
FPP leverages the PCI-SIG SR-IOV specication. Virtual
controllers can be used by the Linux host directly and/or
assigned to virtual machines.
• Assign up to 63 Linux host processes or virtual
machines per port to virtual functions.
• Control the partitioning of per port bandwidth across
multiple dedicated network resources, ensuring
balanced QoS by giving each assigned virtual
controller equal access to the ports bandwidth.
Network administrators can also rate limit each of these
services to control how much of the pipe is available to
each process.
VMDQ for Emulated Path: VMDQ, enables a hypervisor
to represent a single network port as multiple network
ports that can be assigned to the individual VMs.
Trac handling is ooaded to the network controller,
delivering the benets of port partitioning with little to
no administrative overhead by the IT sta.
SR-IOV for Direct Assignment: Adapter-based
isolation and switching for various virtual station
instances enables optimal CPU usage in virtualized
environments.
• 128 virtual functions (VFs), each VF can support a
unique and separate data path for I/O related
functions within the PCI Express hierarchy.
• Use of SR-IOV with a networking device, for example,
allows the bandwidth of a single port (function) to be
partitioned into smaller slices that can be allocated to
or containers for their network infrastructure now
have a common VF driver. This driver eases SR-IOV
hardware upgrades or changes, preserves base mode
functionality in hardware and software, and supports
an advanced set of features in the Intel® Ethernet
700 Series.
Enhanced Network Virtualization Overlays (NVO)
Network virtualization has changed the way networking
is done in the data center, delivering accelerations across
a wide range of tunneling methods.
VxLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE, MPLS, and VxLAN-GPE with
NSH Ooads: These stateless ooads preserve
application performance for overlay networks, and the
network trac can be distributed across CPU cores,
increasing network throughput.
Greater Intelligence and Performance for NFV and
Cloud deployments
Dynamic Device Personalization (DDP) customizable
packet filtering, along with enhanced Data Plane
Development Kit (DPDK), support advanced packet
forwarding and highly-efficient packet processing
for both Cloud and Network Functions Virtualization
(NFV) workloads.
• DDP enables workload-specic optimizations, using
the programmable packet-processing pipeline.
Additional protocols can be added to the default set
to improve packet processing eciency that results in
higher throughput and reduced latency. New protocols
can be added or modied on-demand, and applied
at runtime using Software Dened Firmware or APIs,
eliminating the need to reset or reboot the server. This
not only keeps the server and VMs up, running, and
computing, it also increases performance for Virtual
Network Functions (VNFs) that process network trac
that is not included in the default rmware.
Download DDP Proles
• DPDK provides a programming framework for Intel®
processors and enables faster development of
high-speed data packet networking applications.
Advanced Trac Steering
Intel® Ethernet Flow Director (Intel® Ethernet FD) is an
advanced trac steering capability. Large numbers of
ow anity lters direct receive packets by their ows to
queues for classication, load balancing, and matching
between ows and CPU cores.
Steering trac into specic queues can eliminate context
switching required within the CPU. As a result, Intel®
Ethernet FD signicantly increases the number of
transactions per second and reduces latency for cloud
applications like memcached.
2
2
FEATURE SDESCRIPTION
GENERAL
RJ45 connections over CAT5e, CAT6, CAT6A cabling• Ensures compatibility with cable lengths up to 100 meters. Two or four ports for maximum exibility.
Energy Ecient Ethernet (EEE)• IEEE 802.3az enabled for reduced power consumption.
Load balancing on multiple CPUs• Increases performance on multi-processor systems by eciently balancing network loads across CPU core when
Support for most network operating systems• Enables broad deployment for dierent applications.
Time Sync (IEEE 1588*, 802.1as)• Enables networked Ethernet equipment to synchronize internal clocks according to a network master clock;
Note: Enabled for 10/5/2.5/1GBASE-T, but not for 100BASE-TX
used with Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) from Microsoft* or scalable I/O on Linux.
endpoint can then acquire an accurate estimate of the master time by compensating for link latency.
I/O FEATURES FOR MULTI-CORE PROCESSOR SERVERS
Intel® Ethernet Flow Director (Intel® Ethernet FD)• An advanced trac steering capability increases the number of transactions per second and reduces latency for
MSI-X support• Minimizes the overhead of interrupts.
Multiple Queues: 1,536 Tx and Rx queues per device• Network packet handling without waiting for buer overow providing ecient packet prioritization.
Tx/Rx IP, SCTP, TCP, and UDP checksum ooading
(IPv4 IPv6) capabilities
cloud applications like Memcached.
• Load-balancing of interrupt handling between multiple cores/CPUs.
• Actual number of queues will vary depending upon software implementation.
• Lower processor usage.
• Checksum and segmentation capability extended to new standard packet type.
VIRT UALIZATION FE ATURES
Next-generation VMDQ• Up to 256 maximum VMDQ VMs supported.
PCI-SIG SR-IOV Implementation (128 per device)• Provides an implementation of the PCI-SIG standard for I/O Virtualization. The physical conguration of each port is
Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VLMB)• VMLB provides trac load balancing (Tx and Rx) across VMs bound to the team interface, as well as fault tolerance
Advanced Packet Filtering• 1536 exact matched packets (unicast or multicast).
VLAN support with VLAN tag insertion, stripping and
• Ooads the data-sorting based on MAC addresses and VLAN tags, functionality from the Hypervisor to the network
silicon, improving data throughput and CPU usage.
divided into multiple virtual ports. Each virtual port is assigned to an individual VM directly by bypassing the virtual
switch in the Hypervisor, resulting in near-native performance.
• Integrated with Intel® VT for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d) to provide data protection between VMs by assigning separate
physical addresses in the memory to each VM.
• 64/port for dual port.
in the event of switch, port, cable, or adapter failure.
• 512 hash entries each for unicast and multicast.
• Lower processor usage.
• Promiscuous (unicast and multicast) transfer mode support.
• Optional ltering of invalid frames.
• Ability to create multiple VLAN segments.
MANAGEABILITY FEATURES
Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) Support• Enables system boot via the LAN (32-bit and 64-bit).
Unied Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)• Enables new technologies during the pre-OS boot process and addresses legacy BIOS limitations on hardware.
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