Networking

Find performance white papers about networking for Linux® on IBM Z® and LinuxONE.

Upgrade OSA-Express6S to OSA-Express7S: Performance Analysis

IBM Z installations often use 10GbE OSA adapters for LAN connections. IBM® z15™ server hardware can be fitted with the most recent OSA-Express7S adapter, or with earlier adapters, such as OSA-Express6S. This paper shows that for some workloads patterns on IBM z15, OSA-Express7S can, at the same link speed, offer performance advantages over OSA-Express6S.

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Upgrade OSA-Express6S to OSA-Express7S: Performance Analysis

Creation date: September 2022

Exploring the performance of network adapters for Linux on IBM Z

With OSA-Express® and RoCE Express, IBM provides two types of physical network adapters for Linux standard networking usage on IBM Z. In this presentation, the performance of the most recent OSA-Express, OSA-Express7S 25 GbE, is compared to its predecessor, OSA-Express6S 10 GbE, and additionally to the 25 GbE RoCE Express2.1 on an IBM z15. It is shown that the OSA-Express7S 25 GbE significantly improves performance compared to its predecessor, while still hitting some limitations. Furthermore, the strengths and weaknesses of the 25 GbE RoCE Express2.1 are highlighted. The presentation concludes describing benefits and downsides of configuring receive packet steering (RPS), a Linux networking feature, with OSA-Express7S and RoCE Express2.1.

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Exploring the performance of network adapters for Linux on IBM Z

Creation date: December 2021