Recently, EB-LINK delivered a batch of 25G optical fiber network cards and supporting high-speed cables to a virtualization service provider in East China for the expansion of its Proxmox VE platform computing cluster. The delivered products were tested one by one before being shipped.
Expansion background: The cluster network has become a bottleneck
The customer's original cluster used Gigabit electrical interfaces for interconnection. As the density of virtual machines increased, live migration and storage traffic squeezed each other, and the backup window was significantly lengthened during peak business periods. Some hosts also experienced packet loss and retransmission on the migration network. After two rounds of plan discussions, the customer decided to upgrade the computing nodes to a 25G network: directly connect the same cabinets with DACs, and add jumpers to optical modules for cross-cabinet links. The transformation cost is controllable.
Delivery list: Network cards and cables are provided at one time
- Compute node equippedPCI-EX8 25G dual optical port fiber optic network card (Intel E810 chip), supports SR-IOV to pass virtual functions through to latency-sensitive virtual machines.
- Used for interconnection with cabinets25G DAC high speed cable, the short line distance scenario has lower cost and lower power consumption than the optical module solution.
- Cross-cabinet links are equipped with corresponding optical modules and LC jumpers, which can be put on the shelves upon arrival to avoid secondary wiring.
Test results and follow-up plans
Tests on the day of launch showed that the effective bandwidth between nodes increased from less than 1Gbps to more than 20Gbps, storage traffic and migration traffic were separated into separate channels without interfering with each other, and the backup window was shortened to about one-third of the original size. EB-LINK technical support provides binding and driver usage instructions in the PVE environment with the product, and will return to confirm the running status after two weeks.
The customer plans to gradually upgrade the access layer of the second computer room to 25G/100G in the next quarter. For similar cluster network expansion needs, please call 0755-83179002 for networking suggestions.