Lenovo 7ZT7A00548 X722 Integrated Controller - 10Gb, 2-Port

Lenovo 7ZT7A00548 X722 Integrated 10 GbE Controller For Think System

Overview

Abstract

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 is a network controller embedded into the Intel C624 "Lewisburg" PCH chipset of Lenovo ThinkSystem servers. The controller connects to available 10 GbE and 1 Gigabit Ethernet LOM adapter cards and onboard connectors to provide a comprehensive 1 GbE / 10 GbE networking solution for ThinkSystem customers.

This product guide provides essential presales information to understand the X722 controller and ThinkSystem LOM adapter offerings and their key features, specifications, and compatibility. This guide is intended for technical specialists, sales specialists, sales engineers, IT architects, and other IT professionals who want to learn more about the ThinkSystem Ethernet solution and consider its use in IT solutions.

Introduction

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 is a network controller embedded into the Intel C624 "Lewisburg" PCH chipset of Lenovo ThinkSystem servers. The controller connects to available 10 GbE and 1 Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) adapter cards and onboard connectors to provide a comprehensive 1 GbE / 10 GbE networking solution for ThinkSystem customers.

ThinkSystem servers support either 10 Gb Ethernet copper or optical connections, or Gigabit Ethernet connections depending on the server model.

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port SFP+ LOM adapter which provides four SFP+ cages for optical or direct-attach copper (DAC) connectivity.

Figure 1. ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port SFP+ LOM adapter (Port 1 at the top)

Did you know?

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 shares the same driver package as the Intel X710 adapters making driver management easier for existing customers.

ThinkSystem LOM adapters are cost-effective adapters that take advantage of the X722 controller embedded in Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family chipset and offer the flexibility advantages of a PCIe adapter while supporting integrated networking features, such as Wake-on-LAN and direct connectivity to the XClarity Controller management processor for NC-SI-compliant systems management.

Part number information

The following table provides the ordering part numbers and feature codes for the ThinkSystem LOM adapters. Supported LOM adapters

Note: The SFP+ LOM adapters ship without any SFP+ transceivers or direct attach cables. These items must be ordered separately as described in the following section.

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port Base-T LOM adapter which provides four RJ45 10GBASE-T ports.

Tip: Ports are numbered sequentially starting with Port 1 at the top of the adapter (furthest away from the edge connector)

Figure 2. ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port Base-T LOM

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port Base-T LOM adapter which provides two RJ45 10GBASE-T ports.

Tip: Ports 1 is at further away from the edge connector and Port 2 is at the bottom, closer to the edge connector.

Features

The Intel X722 controller is optimized for data center, cloud, and mobile applications and includes the following features:

• VXLAN/NVGRE Hardware 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, the controller offloads LSO, GSO, and checksum from the host software, which reduces CPU overhead.
• Low latency: Intel Ethernet Flow Director delivers hardware-based application steering and Intel Data Direct I/O makes the processor cache the primary destination and source of I/O data rather than main memory.
• Virtualization performance: With Intel Virtualization Technology (VT), the controller delivers outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. The controller reduces I/O bottlenecks by providing intelligent offloads for networking traffic per virtual machine (VM), which enables near-line rate speeds for small packets and supports almost an unlimited amount of isolated traffic flows so that you can scale your cloud environment.
• Next-generation VMDq: The controller support up to 128 VMDq VMs and offer enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) feature by providing weighted round-robin servicing for the Tx data. The controller offloads the data-sorting functionality from the hypervisor to the network silicon, which improves data throughput and CPU usage.
• SR-IOV implementation: Provides an implementation of the PCI-SIG standard for I/O Virtualization. The physical configuration of each port is divided into multiple virtual ports. Each virtual port is assigned to an individual VM directly by bypassing the virtual switch in the Hypervisor, which results in near-native performance.
• iWarp RDMA support implements kernel bypass and direct data placement and allows for more efficient high-speed networking by eliminating queues and network related interrupts
• VM load balancing: Provides traffic load balancing (Tx and Rx) across VMs that are bound to the team interface. It also provides fault tolerance of a switch, port, or cable.
• Auto-detect (PnP) feature for the LOM adapters, enabling you to change LOM adapters (eg from a 1Gb LOM to 10 Gb LOM) and the network interface will automatically reconfigure during the boot process

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port SFP+ LOM adapter which provides two SFP+ cages for optical or direct-attach copper (DAC) connectivity.

Tip: Ports 1 is at further away from the edge connector and Port 2 is at the bottom, closer to the edge connector.

Figure 4. ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port SFP+ LOM adapter

Specifications

The ThinkSystem LOM adapters support 1 Gb and 10 Gb Ethernet speeds as shown in the following table.

Note: None of the adapters support 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps Ethernet speeds.

Supported network speeds and PHY chip used in each LOM adapter

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 has the following specifications:

Adapter connectors:

• Gigabit adapters: RJ45 connectors
• 10 GbE 10GBASE-T adapters: RJ45 connectors
• 10 GbE SFP+ adapters: Empty SFP+ cages supporting SFP+ transceivers or DAC cables

Host interface:

• PCI Power Management/ACPI Extensions
• TLP Processing Hint (TPH) Support
• MSI-X Support - up to 1168 MSI-X vectors

Virtualization features:

• Microsoft Network Virtualization that uses Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE)
• VMware Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN)
• Intel Virtual Technology (VT) with VMDq for virtualization
• VEB enhancement
• SR-IOV support - 4 physical functions, 128 virtual functions
• Virtual Bridging Support: VEPA/802.1Qbg
• iWarp RDMA support

Note: SR-IOV is only supported at 10 Gbps speeds

Management features:

• Advanced filtering capabilities (IPv4, IPv6)
• SNMP
• RMON statistic counters
• Wake on LAN support (first port only)
• NC-SI for XClarity Controller (XCC) shared management port connectivity only through port 1
• Intel PROSet Utility for easy configuration and management

Additional features:

• IPv4 and IPv6 support
• Jumbo Frame Support: 9728 bytes
• VLAN support
• Flow Control
• 1588 Time Synchronization Support

TCP/IP Layer 2 features:

• Receive Side Scaling (RSS)
• Large Send Offload (LSO)
• TCP/UDP/IP/SCTP Checksum Offload
• IPv4, IPv6
• Supports iSCSI as an iSCSI software initiator

Teaming support:

• Supports teaming with the X710 and other Intel 10Gb adapters
• Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT)
• Switch Fault Tolerance (SFT)
• Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB)
• VM Load Balancing (VMLB)
• IEEE 802.3ad (link aggregation control protocol)

*IEEE 802.1Q VLAN support with VLAN tag insertion, with stripping and packet filtering for up to 4096 VLAN tags.

*IEEE 802.3x flow control support

*IEEE 802.1p Class of Service (CoS)/QoS

*Support for Advanced Packet Filtering

*UEFI and legacy PXE boot

*The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 1Gb 4-port RJ45 LOM adapter which provides four RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

*Tip: Ports are numbered sequentially starting with Port 1 at the top of the adapter (furthest away from the edge connector)

Figure 5. ThinkSystem 1Gb 4-port RJ45 LOM

Standards supported

The X722 controller supports the following IEEE standards:

• IEEE 802.1p CoS traffic prioritization
• IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging
• IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol
• IEEE 802.3x Full-duplex flow control
• IEEE 1588, 802.1as Time Sync

10 GbE standards:

• IEEE 802.3ae 10GBASE-SR short range fiber optics 10 Gb Ethernet
• 10GSFP+Cu SFP+ Direct Attach copper
• IEEE 802.3ab 1000BASE-T copper twisted pair Gigabit Ethernet
• IEEE 802.3an 10GBASE-T copper twisted pair 10 Gb Ethernet

Server support

The ThinkSystem LOM adapters are supported in the servers listed in the following table.

As shown in the table, some ThinkSystem servers do not support the LOM adapters even though they offer Intel Ethernet Connection X722:

• The ST550 tower server has two onboard Gigabit ports that connect to the X722 controller
• The SD530 dense server routes two 10 GbE connections form the X722 controller to the Ethernet ports in the EIOM network modules in the D2 Enclosure.
• The SN550 and SN850 Blade servers use use a Fabric Connector ("Periscope connector") to route four 10 GbE connections to the midplane of the Flex System Enterprise Chassis.

ThinkSystem server support

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem 1Gb 2-port RJ45 LOM adapter which provides two RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Tip: Ports 1 is at further away from the edge connector and Port 2 is at the bottom, closer to the edge connector.

Operating system support

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 and ThinkSystem LOM adapters support the following operating systems

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
• Microsoft Windows Server 2016
• Microsoft Windows Server Version 1709
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0 U3
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 U1

Warranty

One-year limited warranty. When installed in a supported server, these adapters assume the system’s base warranty and any warranty upgrade.

Agency approvals

• The LOM adapters conform to the following standards:
• UL recognized to UL60950-1 2nd Edition
• FCC Rules, Part 15, Class A
• Australian EMC Framework (RCM)
• Japan VCCI, Class A
• Industry Canada, ICES-003, Class A
• EU (CE Mark)
• Korea KC-RRA, Class A
• China RoHS compliant