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Table of Contents
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.
Change History
Changes in the December 11, 2024 update:
- The following adapters are now withdrawn from marketing:
- ThinkSystem 1Gb 2-port RJ45 LOM, 7ZT7A00544
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00548
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00549
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.
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
Supported transceivers and cables
The 2-port and 4-port SFP+ LOM adapters have empty SFP+ cages that support SFP+ SR and LR transceivers as listed in the following table.
The ThinkSystem D2 10Gb 8-port SFP+ module, 7M17A04000, supports SFP+ SR and LR transceivers as listed in the following table.
The following table lists the fiber optic cables and Active Optical Cables supported by the SFP+ adapters.
The following table lists the direct-attach copper (DAC) cables supported by the SFP+ adapters.
The following table lists the Category 6 (CAT 6) cables supported by the 1Gb and 10Gb RJ45 adapters.
The following table lists the supported Category 5e (CAT 5e) cables supported by the 1Gb RJ45 adapters
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.
Figure 3. ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port Base-T LOM
Features
The Intel X722 controller is optimized for data center, cloud, and mobile applications and includes the following features:
- VXLAN, NVGRE and GENEVE 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.
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)
- GENEVE support
- Intel Virtual Technology (VT) with VMDq for virtualization
- VMware NetQueue and Microsoft VMQ support
- VEB enhancement
- SR-IOV support - 4 physical functions, 128 virtual functions
- Virtual Bridging Support: VEPA/802.1Qbg
- iWarp RDMA support
Note: These virtualization features are 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
- Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) 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:
- 10Gb LOM adapters support teaming with the X710 and other 10Gb adapters
- 1Gb LOM adapters support teaming with the I350 and other 1Gb adapters
- Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT)
- Switch Fault Tolerance (SFT)
- Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB)
- VM Load Balancing (VMLB)
- IEEE 802.3ad (link aggregation control protocol)
Note: Teaming is not vendor specific
- 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
Note: QoS is only supported at 10 Gbps speeds
- 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.
The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.
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.
Figure 6. ThinkSystem 1Gb 2-port RJ45 LOM
Cabling requirements
The network cables that can be used with the adapters are described in the following sections.
- 10GBASE-SR (supported with the 10 GbE SFP+ SR transceivers listed in Table 2)
850 nm communication that uses multimode fiber cable (50 µ or 62.5 µ) up to 300 m that uses an LC duplex connector
- 10GSFP+Cu (supported with the SFP+ DAC cables listed in Table 3)
Operating system support
The following tables list the supported operating systems for the adapters.
- ThinkSystem 1Gb 2-Port RJ45 LOM, 7ZT7A00544
- ThinkSystem 1Gb 4-Port RJ45 LOM, 7ZT7A00545
- ThinkSystem 2-Port SFP+ LOM, 7ZT7A00546
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-Port SFP+ LOM, 7ZT7A00547
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-Port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00548
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-Port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00549
- ThinkSystem D2 10Gb 8-port EIOM Base-T (RJ45), 7M17A04001
- ThinkSystem D2 10Gb 8-port EIOM SFP+, 7M17A04000
Tip: These tables are automatically generated based on data from Lenovo ServerProven.
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
Top-of-rack Ethernet switches
The following table lists the Ethernet LAN switches that are offered by Lenovo.
For more information, see the list of Product Guides in the following switch categories:
- 1 Gb Ethernet switches: http://lenovopress.com/networking/tor/1gb?rt=product-guide
- 10 Gb Ethernet switches: http://lenovopress.com/networking/tor/10gb?rt=product-guide
- 25 Gb Ethernet switches: http://lenovopress.com/networking/tor/25gb?rt=product-guide
- 40 Gb Ethernet switches: http://lenovopress.com/networking/tor/40gb?rt=product-guide
- 100 Gb Ethernet switches: https://lenovopress.com/networking/tor/100Gb?rt=product-guide
Related publications
For more information, see the following resources:
- Lenovo ThinkSystem networking options product web page
https://lenovopress.com/lp0765-networking-options-for-thinksystem-servers - Lenovo ServerProven compatibility information for network adapters:
http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/serverproven - Lenovo ThinkSystem product publications:
http://thinksystem.lenovofiles.com/help/index.jsp
Trademarks
Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. A current list of Lenovo trademarks is available on the Web at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/legal/copytrade/.
The following terms are trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both:
Lenovo®
ServerProven®
ThinkSystem®
XClarity®
The following terms are trademarks of other companies:
AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Intel® and Xeon® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Linux® is the trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
Microsoft®, Windows Server®, and Windows® are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
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Full Change History
Changes in the December 11, 2024 update:
- The following adapters are now withdrawn from marketing:
- ThinkSystem 1Gb 2-port RJ45 LOM, 7ZT7A00544
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 2-port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00548
- ThinkSystem 10Gb 4-port Base-T LOM, 7ZT7A00549
Changes in the September 17, 2023 update:
- Withdrawn cables are now hidden; click Show Withdrawn Products to view them - Supported transceivers and cables section
Changes in the October 13, 2020 update:
- Added the SR850 V2 and SR860 V2 servers - Server support section
Changes in the September 15, 2020 update:
- The adapters support the GENEVE hardware offload - Features section
Changes in the January 7, 2020 update:
- Added SR850P to the server support table - Server support section
Changes in the September 8, 2019 update:
- Added SE350, SR635 and SR655 to the server table - Server support section
- OS support tables are now generated from ServerProven - Operating system support section
Changes in the November 5, 2018 update:
- Added new servers: ThinkSystem ST50, ST250, SR150 and SR250 (not supported)
- Clarified the transceivers supported by the D2 10Gb 8-port SFP+ EIOM module - Table 3
Changes in the October 31, 2018 update:
- The ThinkSystem D2 10Gb 8-port SFP+ module does not support 1Gb connections - Table 7
Changes in the June 23, 2018 update:
- Removed the following SFP28 25Gb Active Optical Cables as unsupported:
- Lenovo 3m 25G SFP28 Active Optical Cable, 7Z57A03541
- Lenovo 5m 25G SFP28 Active Optical Cable, 7Z57A03542
- Lenovo 10m 25G SFP28 Active Optical Cable, 7Z57A03543
- Lenovo 15m 25G SFP28 Active Optical Cable, 7Z57A03544
- Lenovo 20m 25G SFP28 Active Optical Cable, 7Z57A03545
Changes in the April 5, 2018 update:
- The 1Gb LOM adapters support teaming with the I350 and other Intel 1Gb adapters - Specifications section
Changes in the January 21, 2018 update:
- The adapters support iSCSI as an iSCSI software initiator - Specifications section
Changes in the October 9, 2017 update:
- The SR530, SR550, SR570 and SR590 have two integrated 1Gb RJ45 connections - Server support section
- Added Teaming support - Specifications section
Changes in the August 15, 2017 update:
- Removed Energy Efficient Ethernet (not supported)
First published: 11 July 2017
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