Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 User Guide Release 10.5.0

RoCE for faster access and lossless connectivity

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) enables memory transfers between two computers in a network without involving the CPU of either computer.

RDMA networks provide high bandwidth and low latency without appreciable CPU overhead for improved application performance, storage and data center utilization, and simplified network management. RDMA was traditionally supported only in an InfiniBand environment. Currently, RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) is also implemented in data centers that use Ethernet or a mixed-protocol environment.

OS10 devices support RoCE v1 and RoCE v2 protocols.

• RoCE v1 – An Ethernet layer protocol that allows for communication between two hosts that are in the same Ethernet broadcast domain.
• RoCE v2 – An Internet layer protocol that allows RoCE v2 packets to be routed, called Routable RoCE (RRoCE).

To enable RoCE, configure the QoS service policy on the switch in ingress and egress directions on all the interfaces. For more information about this configuration, see Configure RoCE on the switch.