20Gb/s InfiniBand Connectivity for the Data Center
Unequalled Price-Performance Means IT Savings

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Use of multi-core CPUs, virtualized infrastructures and networked storage are driving the need for higher I/O performance. I/O consolidation not only reduces upfront costs, but also has long term TCO impact. Servers equipped with 20Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity are prime for delivering what the data center needs today.

Addressing Connectivity Challenges

Choosing a high-performance connectivity option requires considerations in several dimensions: Price-performance, compatibility, consolidation, interoperability, virtualization, reliable services and manageability. 20Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity provides optimal solutions in all of those dimensions.

Proven Price-Performance

20Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity provides up to 1.5 times throughput with 1/5th the latency, 1/5th the CPU utilization, and at a fraction of the cost per MB/s (end user price including adapter, cable and switch port) compared with available 10-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options. When compared with Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options, InfiniBand excels in price performance benchmarks with many data center applications.

InfiniBand-based block storage throughput performance is 9 times more than Gigabit Ethernet based iSCSI and twice the maximum theoretical bandwidth limit of 4Gb/s Fibre Channel. Through I/O consolidation capabilities, InfiniBand offers these benefits at a fraction of the cost.

Compatibility

InfiniBand commands the highest shipments to date of any standards-based 10Gb/s or higher connectivity solution. It is the most mature RDMA and transport offload-enabled solution, and as such commands the broadest ecosystem support in terms of CPU and OS platforms and applications support. InfiniBand software supports all standard application interfaces such as IP, sockets, SCSI, iSCSI and NFS.  In virtualized server environments, VMs with legacy and applications supported over NIC and HBA interfaces can work without any changes.

Figure: Shared I/O = Lower Cost

I/O Consolidation

Convergence of networking, storage, compute and management connectivity is important, for improved I/O utilization and ease of manageability. InfiniBand, with its Channel I/O based architecture, enables simultaneous use and therefore convergence all four connectivity elements on the same adapter port. The result is a clean and cost-effective “one wire” data center infrastructure that can avail of the networking and storage related price-performance benefits mentioned above. Together with virtualization support, as elaborated below, this becomes even more compelling.

Seamless Interoperability

Through use of cost-effective InfiniBand-to-Ethernet and InfiniBand-to-Fibre Channel bridges available in the market, servers using consolidated InfiniBand based I/O can seamlessly connect with existing SAN, LAN and WAN infrastructures.

Virtualization

InfiniBand Channel I/O virtualization (CIOV)provides compelling value-adds in both software-based and hardware-based I/O virtualization. In the VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 environment, a single InfiniBand adapter can replace multiple GigE NICs and FC HBAs without compromising on performance, VM/application compatibility, and interoperability to existing LAN. VMware Virtual Center management benefits can be kept intact and seamlessly working over InfiniBand, thereby preserving longer term TCO.

In hardware-based I/O environments such as with a Novell/Xen implementation, InfiniBand enables offload of the virtualization intermediary functions (hypervisor), enabling native OS performance from VMs. Hardware-based isolation can be enforced for I/O operations from VMs, improving security.

Reliable Services

Unlike Ethernet, which offers best effort service and relies on software for reliable service, InfiniBand offers reliable connectivity in hardware. The result is an efficient loss-less fabric with deterministic performance. This means that packets entering the fabric are guaranteed a certain level of service. This deterministic characteristic of InfiniBand complements real time operating system services (such as available in Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time (SLERT)) and together they form the perfect solution for latency-sensitive data center applications. High availability capabilities enable use of InfiniBand in mission critical applications.

Manageability

The manageability ecosystem for InfiniBand offers many choices. I/O consolidation capabilities in InfiniBand reduce management headaches to managing one fabric only – for server and storage connectivity. InfiniBand OEMs, such as Cisco and Voltaire, offer easy to use InfiniBand management solutions for server and storage connectivity in native and virtualized environments. Besides, InfiniBand-based virtual infrastructures can use VMware’s Virtual Center with available third party management extensions.

Conclusion

The table below summarizes the key connectivity requirements in the data center and how 20Gb/s InfiniBand meets those needs, and is therefore ready for enterprise data center deployments.