Introduction

This is the user guide for NVIDIA® MetroX®-3 XC product family. This document contains the complete product overview, installation and initialization instructions, and product specifications.

The NVIDIA® MetroX®-3 XC (Xternal Connect) long-haul system seamlessly and securely extends the reach of the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform, providing high data throughput, In-Network Computing, and native remote direct-memory access (RDMA) communications. Enhancing data security, MetroX-3 XC provides encrypted connectivity over long distances and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) infrastructures. MetroX-3 XC can extend the reach of InfiniBand up to 40 kilometers, enabling connectivity between remote data centers, from edge infrastructures to data centers, or between data centers and remote storage infrastructures for high availability and disaster recovery.

MetroX-3 XC guarantees high-performance, high-volume data sharing. Users can easily migrate application jobs from one InfiniBand-based data center to another or combine the compute power of multiple remote data centers together for higher overall performance and scalability. MetroX-3 XC is designed for today’s business continuity and simplified disaster recovery. It comes as an appliance with four ports: Two provide connectivity to the local InfiniBand network; the other two provide long-haul connectivity into a DWDM infrastructure. In addition to enabling data center expansion, disaster recovery, data mirroring, and campus connectivity, select models of MetroX-3 XC systems support long-haul security by encrypting the transmitted data.

The MetroX-3 XC system comes with built-in chassis management (MLNX-XC) software, including administrative tools to manage firmware, power supplies, fans, ports, and other system interfaces. The MetroX-3 XC software’s GUI-based web management provides full alarm, event history, activities log, and performance monitoring for all optical modules.

NVIDIA MetroX-3 XC Highlights

For a list of NVIDIA MetroX-3 XC highlights, refer to the system's datasheet.

The NVIDIA MetroX-3 XC system populate the following components:

• Three ConnectX-7 network interface cards (NICs) which enable the hardware-based forwarding of IP packets from the InfiniBand to Ethernet, and vice versa.

• Two redundant, load-sharing power supply units at the rear side of the system. The PSUs are housed in a 2U canister. Each PSU has an extraction handle, PSU status LED and a power socket.

  • One fan per power supply unit on the rear panel of the appliance.

• Six internal fans for cooling the CPU and expansion cards. Under normal operation, the cooling fans operate at a constant speed. If the system module fails or one of the temperature thresholds is exceeded, the cooling fans automatically raise their rotation speeds to draw more airflow.

Management Interfaces, PSUs, and Fans

For a full list of features, please refer to the system's datasheet.

NVIDIA MetroX-3 XC includes the NVIDIA Gateway Operating System, MLNX-GW, which manages the appliance and handles the high availability and load balancing between the ConnectX cards and between gateway appliances. For a detailed description of MLNX-GW, please contact your NVIDIA representative.

The list of certifications per system for different regions of the world (such as EMC, safety, and others) is located on the NVIDIA Networking website at https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/networking/environmental-and-regulatory-compliance/.