Summary

The latest Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with 3rd generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors will need to be reinforced with ample networking utilities to ensure that maximum performance is achieved. This DfD will list the top three networking utilities customers can consider implementing to ensure their networking bandwidth and speeds are adequate for PowerEdge servers with 3rd generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors.

New Processor Functionality

With the recent release of the 3rd generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors, new PowerEdge servers, such as the R650, R750 and R750xa, will greatly benefit from the CPU upgrades received. This includes having up to 40 cores per processor, eight channel memory, 3200MT/s memory speeds, support for PCIe Gen4 and more. With these features further enhancing compute capabilities, it is critical that networking speeds and bandwidth are not a system bottleneck.

Here are three networking capabilities you won’t find on previous Intel PowerEdge platforms that will ensure the data center network is optimized for the latest PowerEdge servers with 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors: 

Up to 200GbE Bandwidth with PCIe Gen4

Migrating from PCIe Gen3 to Gen4 will double server networking bandwidth.  This increase in bandwidth is significant for data center networking because densely sized data has become normalized and the bandwidth increase with PCIe Gen4 will allow the network to rapidly move this data from the server to the internet. Components like GPUs, NVMe SSDs and VMs are key drivers for this increase in data size.

Figure 1 - PCIe Gen4 speed and bandwidth increases over Gen3

To stay ahead of the data curve, our top recommendation for growing datacenters is to increase ethernet connectivity speeds from 10GbE to 25GbE. With the inclusion of PCIe Gen4 capabilities, moving to 25GbE will provide the following benefits: 

• 200GbE bandwidth on a dual port 100GbE network card, fully utilizing both ports
• 4x25GbE is now possible in a x8 slot with PCIe Gen4
• 200Gb HDR InfiniBand on a single slot is now possible with PCIe Gen4
• Optimized cost-per-bit and power consumption 

OCP3.0

Dell Technologies actively collaborated in the development of the OCP3.0 (Open Compute Project) form factor, providing various test fixtures and architecture design contributions. Therefore, it is of no surprise that support for the OCP3.0 network adapter card is included in the latest PowerEdge servers. The OCP3.0 networking adapter card merges the best practices from various proprietary technologies to create a flexible networking solution that provides PowerEdge users the following benefits:

• Higher networking speeds with PCIe Gen4 support
• A compact SFF mechanical specification, allowing for servers to stack PCIe and OCP3 slots in a 1U server design
• High-speed sideband management (NC-SI) which enables iDRAC shared LOM functionality
• Fully replaces the PowerEdge rNDC (rack network daughter card) functionality with industry standard form factor

Figure 2 - OCP3 adapter card

SNAP I/O with InfiniBand

The SNAP I/O card with InfiniBand technology is a solution created to balance I/O performance while decreasing the TCO. It allows two CPUs to share one SNAP I/O network adapter (instead of requiring two adapters) so data can avoid traversing the UPI inter-processor link when accessing remote memory.

The SNAP I/O card with InfiniBand is a great solution for environments where low latency is a priority, two- card redundancy is not needed and single-NIC bandwidth is unlikely to bottleneck. PowerEdge customers who adopt this technology will gain the following benefits:

• Reduced TCO (one less adapter, cable and switchport)
• Balanced  I/O (producing higher network bandwidth and lower latency)
• Increased UPI bandwidth
• Decreased CPU utilization

Figure 3 - Diagram explaining how the SNAP I/O card balances network I/O and removes the need for a second NIC and it’s supporting infrastructure

Conclusion

The release of new Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with 3rd generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processors will create opportunities to increase the PowerEdge servers computing capabilities. These three network utilities will help to ensure the data center network is optimized to meet future computing goals.