Juniper Networks releases STAC-M2 Benchmarks using QFabric System

First published STAC-M2 project to utilize a data center-scale network fabric as the interconnect, rather than a single switch.

STAC has released an audited STAC-M2(TM) Benchmark of the following stack:

Network:
- Juniper Networks QFabric System (see below)
- Mellanox MNPH29D-XTR ConnectX®-2 EN NICs with RoCE

Messaging software:
- IBM WMQ Low Latency Messaging v2.6.0.3

Server platform:
- IBM x3650 M3 Model Model 7945 Servers
- 2 x six-Core Intel Xeon X5690 3.47 GHz
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 5.5

This was the first published STAC-M2 project to utilize a data center-scale network fabric as the interconnect, rather than a single switch. The Juniper QFabric System takes the primary components of a modular switch (line cards, backplane, and routing engines) and distributes them across three components: a high-density, fixed-configuration, top-of-rack edge device (QFabric Node - QFX3500), a high-speed transport device (QFabric Interconnect - QFX3008) that serves as the backplane, and a routing engine (QFabric Director) that provides all control and management services for the fabric. According to Juniper, the design goal for QFabric was to create a fabric that scales very high without increasing latency, while offering the management simplicity of a single switch.

Each message in these tests transited an ingress QFabric Node, a QFabric Interconnect, and an egress QFabric Node. At the base message rate in the baseline test (STAC.M2.v1.0.BASELINE.LAT1), the latency of this solution had a mean of 10 microseconds and standard deviation of 1 microsecond.

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