The X710-QDA2 delivers two ports of 40GbE, and is backwards compatible to 10GbE. Intel Ethernet 700 Series Network Adapters are the foundation for server connectivity, providing broad interoperability, critical performance optimizations, and increased agility for Telecommunications, Cloud, and Enterprise IT network solutions.
A complete, unified networking solution
Converging data and storage onto one fabric eliminates the need for multiple adapters, cables, and switches. Furthermore both 10 and 40 gigabit Ethernet provides the bandwidth to converge these multiple fabrics onto a single wire. A key capability that makes all this possible is traffic class separation provided by Data Center Bridging (DCB) - providing a one-wire solution with virtual pipes for the different classes of traffic.
One adapter, one price
With the Intel adapters, iSCSI and FCoE support are included in the price of an adapter. There is no need to purchase multiple adapters or additional licensing for an XL710 adapter. It's simple and easy. Everything you need to unify your networking is included in a single SKU.
Lowest power consumption
The new generation of XL710 adapters are power misers. They deliver double the throughput with only half the power of the previous generation.
Energy efficient Ethernet (EEE)
Reduces power consumption during periods of low data activity. Energy is used to maintain the physical layer transmitters in a "ready state" to transmit data on the wire. During periods of low data traffic, EEE sends a low-power-idle signal to put the transmitters into a "low power state" saving power and cost. When data needs to be sent, EEE sends a normal idle signal to wake up the transmit system before data is due to be sent so there is no degradation of performance.
Server virtualization
With Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), the XL710 family of adapters deliver outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. They reduce I/O bottlenecks by providing intelligent offloads for networking traffic per virtual machine (VM), enabling near-native performance and VM scalability.
Network virtualization
Network virtualization is the next big trend in creating an agile data center. The family of XL710 adapters are ready to help you take that next step.
VXLAN, NVGRE, Geneve 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 XL710 offloads LSO, GSO, and checksum from the host software reducing CPU overhead.
Intel Ethernet flow director
Flow Director is an advanced traffic steering capability built into the XL710 controller. It consists of a large number of flow affinity filters that direct received packets by their flows to queues for classification, load balancing, and matching between flows and CPU cores. It eliminates context switching required within the CPU. As a result, Flow Director significantly increases the number of transactions per second and reduces latency for cloud applications like Memcached.
Intelligent offloads
The Intel Xeon processor family has demonstrated increased computing performance and increased integration of key server subsystems generation after generation. To offload is to leverage the ever-escalating computing power of the Intel Xeon processor where appropriate and implement complementary accelerations in the network controller - this is what Intel refers to as "intelligent offloads." By employing a balanced hybrid of compute and offload, intelligent offloads are able to achieve the optimized point of performance and efficiency.
