Network Card Intel I350T2V2BLK

iWARP/RDMA provides converged, low-latency fabric services for data centers by enabling Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Ethernet. Key components that reduce latency include Kernel Bypass, Direct Data Placement and Transport Acceleration. The adapter is PCI-SIG SR-IOV capable, allowing a single physical I/O resource (for example, an Ethernet port) to appear as multiple separate virtual devices for use by virtual machines. Intel® Ethernet Power Management technology reduces idle power and adapts capacity and power to demand to improve energy efficiency. Flexible Port Partitioning (FPP) uses PCI-SIG SR-IOV to split a physical Ethernet device into multiple virtual devices and ensure fair bandwidth allocation. Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) offload some VMM switching to the network hardware to reduce I/O switching overhead and improve throughput and system performance.

Advantages

Low-latency RDMA over Ethernet reduces CPU overhead and improves application responsiveness in latency-sensitive workloads. SR-IOV and Flexible Port Partitioning enable efficient sharing of a single physical port among multiple virtual machines while preserving QoS and fair bandwidth distribution. Intel® Ethernet Power Management lowers power consumption during idle and scales energy use with demand. VMDq reduces virtual machine I/O switching overhead, resulting in higher throughput and better overall system efficiency.

Key specifications

• Technology: iWARP / RDMA over Ethernet
• SR-IOV: PCI-SIG SR-IOV capable
• Power management: Intel® Ethernet Power Management
• Port partitioning: Flexible Port Partitioning (FPP) using SR-IOV
• VM I/O acceleration: Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq)

How to use

Install the network adapter according to your server or host vendor instructions and enable relevant firmware and driver support that provides iWARP/RDMA, SR-IOV and VMDq features. Configure SR-IOV or FPP in the host firmware and hypervisor to expose virtual functions to guest virtual machines, and enable Intel® Ethernet Power Management options in the driver or management interface to optimize power behavior. Verify RDMA operation and low-latency paths using vendor diagnostic tools and adjust QoS or partitioning settings to match workload requirements.

Recommendations

Use SR-IOV or FPP when multiple VMs require near-native I/O performance; enable VMDq to reduce hypervisor switching overhead for heavy virtualized I/O; and enable Intel® Ethernet Power Management to balance performance and energy efficiency. Ensure compatible drivers, firmware and hypervisor versions are deployed before enabling advanced features.