Intel E1G44ET2 E1G44ET2BLK Manual Do Utilizador

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Optimized for Virtualization

The Intel® Gigabit ET, ET2, and EF Multi-Port Server Adapters  
showcase the latest virtualization technology called Intel®  
Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel® VT for  
Connectivity). Intel VT for Connectivity is a suite of hardware 
assists that improve overall system performance by lowering  
the I/O overhead in a virtualized environment. This optimizes  
CPU usage, reduces system latency, and improves I/O through-
put. Intel VT for Connectivity includes:

• Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq)

• Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology

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 (Intel® I/OAT)

Use of multi-port adapters in a virtualized environment is very 
important because of the need to provide redundancy and  
data connectivity for the applications/workloads in the virtual 
machines. Due to slot limitations and the need for redundancy 
and data connectivity, it is recommended that a virtualized  
physical server needs at least six GbE ports to satisfy the  
I/O requirement demands. 

Virtual Machine Device queues (VMDq)

VMDq reduces I/O overhead created by the hypervisor in a 
virtualized server by performing data sorting and coalescing in 
the network silicon.

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 VMDq technology makes use of multiple 

queues in the network controller. As data packets enter the 
network adapter, they are sorted, and packets traveling to the 
same destination (or virtual machine) get grouped together in a 
single queue. The packets are then sent to the hypervisor, which 
directs them to their respective virtual machines. Relieving the 
hypervisor of packet filtering and sorting improves overall CPU 
usage and throughput levels.

This generation of PCIe Intel® Gigabit adapters provides improved 
performance with the next-generation VMDq technology, which 
includes features such as loop back functionality for inter-VM 
communication, priority-weighted bandwidth management, and 
doubling the number of data queues per port from four to eight. 
It now also supports multicast and broadcast data on a virtual-
ized server.

Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology

Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel I/OAT) is a suite of fea-
tures that improves data acceleration across the platform, from 
networking devices to the chipset and processors, which help 
to improve system performance and application response times. 
The different features include multiple queues and receive-side 
scaling, Direct Cache Access (DCA), MSI-X, Low-Latency Inter-
rupts, Receive Side Scaling (RSS), and others. Using multiple 
queues and receive-side scaling, a DMA engine moves data using 
the chipset instead of the CPU. DCA enables the adapter to 
pre-fetch data from the memory cache, thereby avoiding cache 
misses and improving application response times. MSI-X helps 
in load-balancing I/O interrupts across multiple processor cores, 
and Low Latency Interrupts can provide certain data streams a 
non-modulated path directly to the application. RSS directs the 
interrupts to a specific processor core based on the application’s 
address.

Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)

For mission-critical applications, where dedicated I/O is required 
for maximum network performance, users can assign a dedicated 
virtual function port to a VM. The controller provides direct 
VM connectivity and data protection across VMs using SR-IOV. 
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.