Intel 7400 - Manual

Consolidation of a Performance-
Sensitive Application: Virtualizing
Electronic Sports League’s
Gaming Infrastructure
White Paper
Intel® Xeon® Processor
7400-based Server
Abstract
An end-user case study with Electronic Sports League (ESL) using VMware ESX 3.5U1*
with NetQueue feature running on Intel® Xeon® processor 7400 series-based servers with
Intel® NICs supporting VMDq feature. Game servers are mission-critical, single-threaded,
processor-intensive, and network-latency sensitive. They were previously believed to be
“non-virtualizeable” due to the overhead of virtualization. In this case, we will show that
game QoS can be preserved on virtualized game servers when using the latest technologies
noted above. We’ll also show that large server consolidation ratios and cost savings can be
achieved at the same time.
Authors: Bob Albers, I/O Usage Architect, and Sreeram Sammeta,
Sr. Systems Engineer, Intel Digital Enterprise Group