I/O Expansion Options - Lenovo ThinkSystem SN550 Product Manual

Embedded 10Gb Network Adapter
The SN550 includes an embedded 4-port 10Gb Intel controller built into the system board. Each SN550
model that uses the embedded Intel controller also has the Fabric Connector installed in I/O connector 1 to
provide connectivity to the Flex system chassis midplane. The feature code for the Fabric Connector is
AUYN. Figure 3 shows the location of the Fabric Connector.
Tip: To provide connectivity for all 4 adapter ports, make sure the associated chassis I/O module has
adequate internal switch ports.
The Adapter to I/O bay correspondence table
through the Fabric Connector to the corresponding switch ports. The Fabric Connector can be removed, if
required, to allow the installation of an I/O adapter on I/O connector 1.
The embedded 10Gb controller is based on the Intel Ethernet Connection X722 network controller which is
part of the Intel C624 "Lewisburg" PCH chipset of the SN550 and other Lenovo ThinkSystem servers.
The Intel X722 controller is optimized for data center, cloud, and mobile applications and includes the
following features:
VXLAN/NVGRE Hardware Offloads: These stateless offloads preserve application performance for
overlay networks. With these offloads, it is possible to distribute network traffic across CPU cores.
At the same time, the controller offloads LSO, GSO, and checksum from the host software, which
reduces CPU overhead.
Low latency: Intel Ethernet Flow Director delivers hardware-based application steering and Intel
Data Direct I/O makes the processor cache the primary destination and source of I/O data rather
than main memory.
Virtualization performance: With Intel Virtualization Technology (VT), the controller delivers
outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. The controller reduces I/O
bottlenecks by providing intelligent offloads for networking traffic per virtual machine (VM), which
enables near-line rate speeds for small packets and supports almost an unlimited amount of
isolated traffic flows so that you can scale your cloud environment.
Next-generation VMDq: The controller supports up to 128 VMDq VMs and offers enhanced Quality
of Service (QoS) by providing weighted round-robin servicing for the Tx data. The controller offloads
the data-sorting functionality from the hypervisor to the network silicon, which improves data
throughput and CPU usage.
SR-IOV implementation: Provides an implementation of the PCI-SIG standard for I/O Virtualization.
The physical configuration of each port is divided into multiple virtual ports. Each virtual port is
assigned to an individual VM directly by bypassing the virtual switch in the Hypervisor, which results
in near-native performance.
iWarp RDMA support implements kernel bypass and direct data placement and allows for more
efficient high-speed networking by eliminating queues and network related interrupts
VM load balancing: Provides traffic load balancing (Tx and Rx) across VMs that are bound to the
team interface. It also provides fault tolerance if a switch, port, or cable fails or is disconnected.
Auto-detect (PnP) feature for the LOM adapters, enabling you to change speed (eg from a 1Gb LOM
to 10 Gb LOM) and the network interface will automatically reconfigure during the boot process.
Note: The onboard Ethernet controller does not support 10 Mb or 100 Mb Ethernet connections.

I/O expansion options

The SN550 has two I/O expansion connectors for attaching I/O adapter cards. The I/O expansion
connectors use a high-density, 216-pin PCIe connection. Installing I/O adapter cards allows the server to
connect with switch modules in the chassis. Each slot has a PCI Express 3.0 x16 host interface and both
slots support the same form-factor adapters. If the SN550 has a Fabric Connector in adapter slot 1, it
Lenovo ThinkSystem SN550 Server
shows how the 4 ports of the embedded controller connect
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