Hardware Platform• 2U Quad Socket Appliance

• 2 Network Mezzanine Cards (NMCs) per CPU

• PCIe Gen 3.0 from CPUs

• Any mix of Dual 40GbE, Quad 10GbE & Octal GbE NMCs for up to 640 Gbps connectivity

• Up to 2 Intel® QuickAssist Accelerators per CPU for encryption

Software Platform• High performance switching

aggregated bandwidth for VNFs

• Hardware independent VNF network attachments for seamless network hardware upgrades and VNF migration

• High capacity, low latency inter-VNF communications to future proof service chaining capabilities

• VNF vendor independence

Solution BriefIntel® Network Builders

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v2Intel® DH8950 PCIe QuickAssist Accelerator

Intel® 85299 & Intel® XL710 Ethernet Controllers

Executive Summary

Network infrastructures are shifting from physical systems to virtual functions and this shift requires a new class of network appliances that provide high performance processing, balanced I/O and hardware or software acceleration. Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are changing the way networks and services are provisioned. This new virtualized infrastructure requires a combination of standard server technology and modular systems that can be configured to deliver line rate performance and exceptional flexibility.

To address these needs, Advantech’s FWA-6512 Series of ultra-high end network appliances has been designed to deliver the highest packet processing performance available on Intel architecture by cleverly balancing 640Gbps of I/O across 4 Intel Xeon Processors in just a 2RU footprint.

Enabled by 6WIND’s 6WINDGate packet processing software this combined platform creates a seamless bridge to SDN and NFV rollout by providing not just a significant increase in throughput and capacity for vendors of non-virtualized physical network appliances but a next generation platform primed for the transformational abilities of SDN and NFV.

FWA-6512Creating a Physical to Virtual Bridge with High Performance NFV enablement

Platform OverviewAdvantech’s FWA-6512 is an open programmable networking appliance which addresses critical networking performance challenges in data centers and telecom cloud networks. The platform is designed to deliver the highest packet processing performance available on Intel architecture by cleverly balancing 640Gbps of I/O and acceleration across 4 Intel Xeon Processors in just a 2RU footprint.

Fully supported by 6WIND’s 6WINDGate packet processing software providing Open vSwitch (OVS) acceleration with additional fast path protocols to deliver high performance NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) on top of intel® DPDK, service providers can benefit from a rapid product development framework with bare-metal performance for NFV applications and deliver new services quickly.

Advantech and 6WIND have collaborated to provide a proof-of-concept platform at IDF 2014 which demonstrates how to increase performance for applications built on top of the Intel Data Plane Development Kit (Intel® DPDK), whether physical or virtual, while providing a seamless software migration path from other Intel Architecture (IA) platforms.

Moreover, the platform offers the widest choice of Network Mezzanine Cards (NMCs) with Intel Gigabit, 10GbE and 40GbE Network Interface Controllers (NICs) and their inherent virtualization enhancements guarantee optimal throughput efficiency using either SR-IOV or Open vSwitch (OVS) acceleration techniques, and enhanced hypervisor support.

To meet increasing security and network optimization challenges, virtualized network functions can leverage the

FWA-6512’s four PCIex16 slots equipped with additional offload adapters based on the Intel® Communications Chipset 8950 with Intel® QuickAssist Technology. This ensures that enterprises can achieve the encrypted network performance needed for a new breed of physical or virtual appliances.

Ultra High End Network ApplianceThe combined Advantech/ 6WINDGate platform offers an open Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) framework to support NFV. It demonstrates IPsec running in both a bare metal architecture (raw performance) and in a VM with an accelerated Open vSwitch (OVS). It provides the highest performance in a 2U form factor using Intel architecture processor power, Intel QuickAssist offload and Intel-based NIC density.

The Advantech FWA-6512 shown in Figure 1 is a 2U network appliance that integrates four Intel Xeon Processors E5-4600 v2 and Intel C604 chipset. The platform supports processors with up to 135W maximum TDP. It also supports up to 1TB DDR3 memory and two hot–swappable 2.5” SATA HDDs or SDDs. The chassis has six hot-swappable cooling fans and redundant 1400W AC or 1500W DC power supplies. The 2U chassis integrates an optimized quad processor motherboard, four internal PCIe slots and up to eight Network Mezzanine Cards (NMCs). With balanced PCIe IO and acceleration across Figure 1: Advantech FWA-6512 ultra-high end network appliance

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the Advantech FWA-6512 Network Application Platform. For IDF, Red Hat Linux is used.

The 6WIND software works with standard orchestration solutions that use OpenStack for NFV and SDN implementations. The software has also been demonstrated with the Project Floodlight OpenFlow controller and other SDN software. The solution demonstrated at IDF is of particular interest to Telecom

all 4 CPU sockets the FWA-6512 yields bets in class performance by avoiding excess QPI traffic.

Each of the eight NMCs can support two 40 GbE interfaces enabling a total I/O bandwidth of 640 Gbps. NMCs are available with four or eight port GbE interfaces, two or four port 10 GbE interfaces and two port 40 GbE interfaces including LAN bypass as option (Figure 2).

Operators who have specific functional and performance requirements for the virtual networking components of NFVI, namely:

• High performance switching aggregated bandwidth for VNFs

• Hardware independent VNF network attachments for seamless network hardware upgrades and VNF migration

• High capacity, low latency inter-VNF communications to future proof service chaining capabilities

• VNF vendor independence

To meet all these requirements, the 6WINDGate solution for NFVI is designed around an open, high performance software switch.

Based on a fast path architecture, 6WINDGate transparently accelerates the operator’s selected software switch to provide extreme bandwidth and low-latency to VNFs. 6WINDGate

1G NMC- 4 or 8 port

10G NMC- 2 or 4 port

40G NMC- 2 port

Figure 2: Advantech Network Mezzanine Cards (NMCs)

Figure 3: COTS Hardware with Accelerated Software for Virtual Infrastructure

Security processing and compression on the platform can be accelerated by using up to four PCIe adapters with two Intel Communications Chipset 8950 devices. Each adapter will support IPsec up to 86 Gbps, SSL up to 100 Gbps and up to 48 Gbps compression.

Accelerated SoftwareThe 6WIND Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) software provides an open networking platform for the FWA-6512 to support NFV. The NFVI leverages the 6WINDGate packet processing software, Open vSwitch (OVS) and Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) to support Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) running on multiple operating systems and delivers performance that is up to 10x the performance of a pure Linux implementation. Figure 3 shows the 6WIND NFVI software running on

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OVS acceleration provides significant performance improvements without any modification to OVS or its management allowing the OVS binary package to be upgraded to benefit from new OVS features while maintaining its accelerated performance.

6WIND’s software switch-based solution isolates VNFs from real hardware, thus eliminating driver dependency in VNF operating systems. This isolation also allows network hardware changes in either connection speed, supplier or function (for example a smart NIC performing DDoS mitigation) without VNF changes. It also allows for live and scheduled migration of VNFs from one platform to the other without any hardware NIC adaptations.

Inter-VNF communications with high capacity and low latency are key differences between traditional Cloud and Telecom Operator environments. While east-west communication exists in Private and Hybrid Clouds, the performance characteristics are dramatically different and thus require a carrier-grade solution. 6WINDGate supports sub-microsecond low latency with several hundreds of Gbps throughput of inter-VNF traffic. It does this without consuming external ports, impacting available bandwidth on the existing ports, or incurring PCI Express contention and latency.

Beyond pure switching capabilities, 6WINDGate will also demonstrate how to

provide enhanced networking services such as L3 forwarding, virtual routing, firewalling and more to extend service chaining capabilities between VNFs.

Advantech PCIE-3215 with Dual Intel® Communications Chipset 8950The Intel® Communications Chipset 8950, former codename Coleto Creek contains hardware engines for crypto acceleration and compression. Intel® QuickAssist Technology is a key feature of the chipset and provides an array of security features which include encryption/ decryption using AES, DES, 3DES or (A)RC4 algorithms, hashing using , SHA-1/2, MD5or HMAC algorithms, deflate and LZS high-speed data compression. Intel® QuickAssist Technology enables high-

speed, secure data compression, storage and data loss prevention, supporting a range of pre-processing services such as IPsec and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) acceleration. Processor-intensive tasks are offloaded to the chipset to relieve the system, in particular in areas such as SSL communications where the initialization and termination of crypto services puts quite a burden on the processor.

Performance

Advantech’s PCIE-3215 PCIe adapter with dual Intel® DH8950 chipsets offers a platform for consistent backwards-

Figure 4: Advantech PCIE-3215 Intel® QuickAssist Acceleration Adapter

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Figure 5: Block diagram of Advantech PCIE-3215. The low profile version allows 4 adapters to be added to the FWA-6512 providing two DH8950’s per CPU

compatible API for hardware acceleration with up to 40 Gbps Compression Acceleration and up to 100 Gbps Crypto Acceleration performing 80K RSA 2k-bit operations per second.

Note: These results provide some guidance for system architects and are provided for informational purposes only. Specific products from Advantech may vary slightly in design and effect actual performance.

SummaryUltra high-end performance is achieved with a combination of the latest Intel Xeon Processor E5-4600 v2, hardware acceleration, high speed network interfaces and software that reaches line rate performance in virtualized environments. The solution provides an open networking platform for the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) based on virtual switch acceleration and networking data plane technology foundation to develop faster high performance VNFs.

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For more information about 6WIND and Advantech solutions visit www.6WIND.com and www.advantech.com/nc

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