Up and Down the Network Stack

Solarflare Powers the NY Stock Exchange- Latency Matters

This week Solarflare announced that NYSE Euronext has selected Solarflare’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters and OpenOnload® software to accelerate its trading network. NYSE Euronext implemented Solarflare’s solution in its next-generation data centers in the greater New York and London metro areas.  By implementing Solarflare, the NYSE was able to decrease latency and increase message rates---latency matters.

See

http://www.nyse.com/press/1313663182325.html

and the story in WatersTechnology:

http://www.waterstechnology.com/sell-side-technology/news/2102624/nyse-euronext-rolls-solarflare-enterpriseonload

Guest blog by Bruce Tolley, Solarflare

 

Solarflare Extends its Reach to Customers: 10GbE Adapter+Switch Bundle with Force10

Force10 Networks, Inc., a leader in high-performance data center networking, today announced that it has entered into a joint marketing agreement with Solarflare, a leader in high-performance, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters and software, to bundle Force10’s S4810 top-of-rack (ToR) data center switch with the Solarflare SFN5122F Enterprise dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) SFP+ server adapter and the Solarflare SFN5162F Midrange dual-port 10GbE SFP+ server adapter providing customers with an end-to-end solution for 10GbE networking. The bundles are available through Force10’s authorized distributors, Avnet and Synnex, in Europe, US, and Canada.

For more information, see     http://www.force10networks.com/news/pressreleases/2011/pr-2011-08-09.asp

Guest blog by Bruce Tolley, Solarflare

Web 2.0 Application Acceleration with Memcached

In the last blog I wrote about the importance of implementing 10GbE over 1GbE in your Web 2.0 infrastructure and what features to look for in a 10GbE NIC…since they are not all the same.  In this blog we are going to look at Memcached and our experience in accelerating access to data for improved user experience. 

Memcached is a widely used distributed database caching technology, implemented in tens of thousands of web implementations, including sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Salesforce.com, Wikipedia, and Craigslist.  Memcached accelerates dynamic web applications and is now an important part of many social networking infrastructures.

Memcached improves the performance of distributed dynamic web and database applications by caching dynamic object requests and reducing the volume of accesses to the database and storage tiers. This dynamic caching can increase the transaction rates of dynamic web applications and reduce database load. Memcached can either utilize unused memory in application servers or be deployed as a dedicated tier in the database, creating a large, shared pool of virtual object-based cache accessible to all servers.

 
In our Lab and at MyYearbook.com we experienced some additional performance improvements using the Solareflare 10GbE NIC along with its unique OpenOnload application acceleration middleware which reduced the overall overhead associated with Memcached accesses.  The result is increased transaction rates and reduced response times for web applications!

In testing performed with a Solarflare SFN5122F 10GbE server adapter, Memcached response times measured using the Memslap benchmark at 200K transactions/sec were cut in half, from 134μs to 65μs.

Come to Couch Conf on July 29^th in San Francisco and discover how you too can improve Web 2.0 application performance with Solarflare technology.

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Guest Blogger: Tim Dales, Solarflare Communications

Web 2.0 Application Acceleration

Current Web 2.0 infrastructures were built when 1Gbit Ethernet server adapters were common and inexpensive to deploy.  As the cost of 10Gbit Ethernet continues to decline, network architects can now consider 10GbE in their designs. Using 10GbE in your Web 2.0 infrastructure can unlock bottlenecks, free up valuable resources and save money.  Consider just a few of the benefits:

• 10x performance in your network
• Less cabling = simplified management
•  Reduced power consumption
  - 10x 1GbE = ~ 80W
  - 1x 10GbE = 5W (SFP+)
  - 50 servers will save 3.75 KW
• Frees up bus slots in servers

But all 10Gbit NICs are not the same. Beware of low-priced Intel NICs (AT2) that are built on older Oplin chip technology, which doesn’t operate at PCI Gen 2.0 speeds and has a limited feature set. Additionally, there are a bunch of “converged” 10Gbit Ethernet adapters in the market from storage HBA vendors (QLogic, Emulex, etc.) that are now trying to put all protocols (FC, iSCSI and Ethernet) on the same wire.  Great concept, but costs are high, performance is lagging and simultaneous multi-protocol support is still developing.

So, for 10GbE to accelerate your Web 2.0 applications, the “pure play” is best.  Look for a 10GbE NIC that offers a good out-of-box experience.  What I mean by this is that the NIC goes into the server easily, you install the driver and it just runs, without tuning or fiddling.  Second, make sure your 10GbE NIC offers core scaling features to balance your workloads over all CPU cores and maximize performance.  Third, hardware-accelerated flow steering which reduces the CPU overhead of IP packet transport, providing more CPU cycles to work on the application.

Once you know that the 10GbE NIC has all those features, you will be assured that you are designing a high performance infrastructure to support Web 2.0 application growth and performance. 

In our next blog we will talk about Memcached and how 10GbE can help accelerate this critical part of Web 2.0 application infrastructures.

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Guest Blogger: Tim Dales, Solarflare Communications