Solarflare Solarflare XtremeScale series, User Manual, Page: 244 / 400

Solarflare Server Adapter User Guide
Solarflare Adapters on Windows
Issue 20 © Solarflare Communications 2017 237
In addition, the latency of communications between the host CPUs, system memory
and the Solarflare PCIe adapter may be PCIe slot dependent. Some slots may be
“closer” to the CPU, and therefore have lower latency and higher throughput:
• If possible, install the adapter in a slot which is local to the desired NUMA node
• For Windows Server 2008 R2 best performance will only be obtained if the
adapter is closest to NUMA node 0 (i.e. physical CPU package 0).
• Some Windows SKUs only support a single CPU package. If the adapter is
plugged into a PCIe slot attached to the second package it will not appear to the
OS.
Please consult your server user guide for more information.
Memory bandwidth
Many chipsets use multiple channels to access main system memory. Maximum
memory performance is only achieved when the chipset can make use of all
channels simultaneously. This should be taken into account when selecting the
number of memory modules (DIMMs) to populate in the server. For optimal
memory bandwidth in the system, it is likely that:
• all DIMM slots should be populated
• all NUMA nodes should have memory installed.
Please consult the motherboard documentation for details.
BIOS Settings
DELL Systems
Refer to the BIOS configuration guidelines recommended by Dell's white paper
“Configuring Low ‐ Latency Environments on Dell PowerEdge Servers” available from:
http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared ‐ content/data ‐ sheets/en/Documents/
configuring ‐ low ‐ latency ‐ environments ‐ on ‐ dell ‐ poweredge ‐ 12g ‐ servers.pdf
HP Systems
Refer to the BIOS configuration guidelines recommended by HP’s white paper
“Configuring the HP ProLiant Server BIOS for Low ‐ Latency Applications” available
from:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01804533/
c01804533.pdf
Although targeted at tuning for real ‐ time operating systems, the recommendations
equally apply to Windows Server platforms.
Other system vendors may publish similar recommendations. In general any BIOS
settings guidelines that are targeted at increasing network performance whilst
minimizing latency and jitter are applicable to all operating systems.