Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2 E10G42BTDA

Overview
Intel’s family of adapters, the Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520 with SFP+ connectivity, are the most flexible and scalable Ethernet adapters for today’s demanding data center environments. Data center networks are being pushed to their limits. The escalating deployments of servers with multi-core processors and demanding applications such as High Performance Computing (HPC), database clusters, and video-on-demand are driving the need for 10 Gbps connections. Customers require flexible and scalable I/O solutions to meet the rigorous requirements of running mission-critical applications in virtualized and unified storage environments.
Powered by Intel’s third-generation 10 GbE network controller, the Intel® Ethernet 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller,
the X520 adapter family addresses the demanding needs of the next-generation data center by providing unmatched features for virtualization, flexibility for LAN and SAN networking, and proven, reliable performance.

Best Choice for Virtualization The explosive growth in virtualization is leading to an increasing demand for
network performance. With more Virtual
Machines (VMs) running on each multi-core server, networking traffic is dramatically increased, with each VM competing for available I/O bandwidth. Intel’s family
of Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520 addresses networking

bottlenecks in virtualized environments. These adapters enable network-intensive applications to achieve the performance expected in a virtualized environment.
The Intel Ethernet X520 family of adapters provides the best networking performance available in the industry, whether the physical port is configured in an emulation mode using the virtual switch in the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), or is directly assigned to a virtual machine. In the emulation mode, Intel’s I/O technology, Virtual Machine Device queues1 (VMDq) optimizes
network performance by offloading data sorting and copying from the software Virtual Switch in the VMM to the Intel Ethernet 82599 10 Gigabit Controller.
This configuration is best suited for a large number of VMs running standard applications that have limited bandwidth and latency requirements.
For mission-critical applications, where dedicated I/O is required for maximum network performance, users can assign a dedicated virtual adapter port to a VM. Using the PCI-SIG SR-IOV capability on an Intel Ethernet X520 adapter provides
direct VM connectivity and data protection across VMs. SR-IOV technology enables the data to bypass the software virtual switch and provides near-native performance. It assigns either physical or virtual I/O ports to individual VMs directly. This technology is best suited for applications that demand the highest I/O throughput and lowest latency performance such as database, storage, financial and other applications.