04/27/2021 – CASwell, a leading manufacturer of innovative and high-performance SD-WAN (uCPE/vCPE) and network security systems, is releasing the CAR-5056 network server switch based on two 2nd Gen. Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The CASwell CAR-5056 is a top-of-the-line server switch for load balancing, network gateway and other typical applications by cloud and communication service providers or data centers. This high-end dual Intel Xeon system uses a programmable Intel Barefoot Tofino ethernet switch that can be amplified by Intel Stratix 10 FPGA modules to raise performance and functionality levels even higher.
Cloud Service Providers (CSP) need a lot of storage and network servers for a comprehensive, secure and fast cloud experience. The CAR-5056 supports these applications by being used as a server switch, load balancer and for network address translation.
Communication Service Provides (CoSP) and mobile networks first and foremost need to provide a fast network for their users and enterprise customers that’s stable, safe and billable. The CAR-5056 supports these applications when used as a broadband network gateway, DNS server or network packet broker.
Many data centers on the other hand need application delivery controllers (ADC) to remove load from the web servers and also provide load balancing. The CAR-5056 can be used as ADC and even for server health monitoring.
Flexible High-End Platform
The CASwell CAR-5056 is based on two 2nd Gen. Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake). With these processors offering up to 28 cores, this platform delivers next-generation network capabilities thanks to its disruptive levels of compute performance coupled with memory and I/O advances designed for compute-hungry and latency-sensitive applications. Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT) is supported to accelerate encryption/decryption performance in cloud, networking, big data, and storage applications. Each CPU can be combined with up to 10 DIMMs for a maximum of 640GB main memory.
The CASwell CAR-5056 offers data plane programmability with P4 on its Intel Barefoot Tofino 64Q Switch. This module is connected to both Intel Xeon processors by PCI Express 3.0 for high bandwidth, delivers better performance at lower power and provides 32 Ethernet ports with 100 Gigabit speeds. This P4-programmable Ethernet switch ASIC delivers more flexibility for data centers. Companies can monitor and control packet processing and update protocols in software to deliver customized performance for specific workloads at scale.
The CASwell CAR-5056 is also prepared to host four Intel Stratix 10 GX FPGAs. The FPGA modules are also connected to both Intel Xeon CPUs by PCI Express 3.0 and support the Tofino switch module via 20 Ethernet ports to meet the high-performance demands of high-throughput systems. These devices are optimized for FPGA applications that require the highest transceiver bandwidth and core fabric performance.
Use cases
Popular websites need to serve up to millions of concurrent requests from users or clients and return the correct content fast and reliably. These websites often use many scaled-out servers to take care of high volumes. They therefore need a load balancer to act as a “traffic cop” routing client requests across all servers to maximize speed and capacity utilization.
The CASwell CAR-5056 can effectively use its switch and FPGA modules for load balancing to distribute client requests or network load more efficiently across multiple server, and ensure the highest availability and reliability of the connected websites.
Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) is an edge device of the IP network and the access point for subscribers, through which they connect to the broadband network. It aggregates user sessions and is responsible for authentication, authorization and accounting. As service providers need not only higher bandwidth, a CAR-5056 BNG can offer value-added services to reduce churn and drive new revenue through its flexibility and network functions virtualization. The CAR-5056 can be configured for both spine and leaf applications in this widely used architecture by adding or removing the FPGA modules.
The CAR-5056 ADC helps applications to direct user traffic in order to remove the excess load from two or more servers. This also covers load-balancing. Other features provided by the CAR-5056 ADC could include IP Traffic Optimization, Traffic Chaining/Steering, SSL offload, Web Application Firewall, DNS System and other applications. Content redirection as well as server health monitoring are possible advanced features. When used in telecommunication infrastructures, the CAR-5056 ADC can also provide various homegrown and value-added services in Gi-LAN areas.
Especially communication service providers, cloud service providers and enterprises with high internal networking workloads should benefit from using the CAR-5056. Network and security appliance companies can use the CAR-5056 as an upgraded next-generation unified threat management device.
Conclusion & Availability
The CASwell CAR-5056 is the best Server Switch for Cloud and Communication Service Providers as well as data centers looking for a powerful solution for their increasing networking needs. The Intel Xeon Scalable processors already represent a high-performance platform but integrating the Tofino Ethernet Switch module and the Stratix 10 FPGAs add flexibility through programmability and even more performance.
The CASwell CAR-5056 can be configured according to customer demand or requirement and samples for customer evaluation are available now.
Please contact your local CASwell representative or sales for any questions!
More information about the CASwell CAR-5056 can be found here:
cas-well.com/products/network-security-and-management/2u-network-appliance/car5056.html
