FAQs on Performance Profiles for 10/25/40 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters

What are performance profiles?
Performance profiles allow you to quickly optimize the performance of your 10/25/40 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters in Windows*. Selecting a performance profile will optimize advanced settings for the selected server role.

What software is required to use performance profiles?
You must install Intel® PROSet for Windows Device Manager to use performance profiles.

Which adapters are supported by performance profiles?
Performance profiles can be configured on the latest 10/25/40 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters. Older, Intel® PRO/10GbE Server Adapters are not supported by performance profiles.

Where do I configure performance profiles?
Profiles are selected on the Advanced tab of the adapter's Windows* device manager property sheet. See figure 1.

Figure 1. Profile Configuration on Advanced Tab.

Can I apply profiles to teams?
Yes, you can apply profiles to teams. When creating a new team, you will be prompted to select a profile to apply to the team.

Which advanced settings are adjusted by performance profiles?
Advanced settings optimized by performance profiles may include:

• Interrupt Moderation
• Receive Side Scaling Queues (RSS Queues)
• Maximum number of RSS Processors
• Virtual Machine Queues

What performance profiles are available?
Intel® Network Connections software, beginning with version 15.7, includes the following performance profiles:

• Standard Server: This profile is optimized for typical servers.
• Web Server: This profile is optimized for IIS and HTTP based web servers.
• Storage Server: This profile is optimized for Fibre Channel over Ethernet and iSCSI over DCB performance. Selecting this profile will disable SR-IOV and VMQ.
• Virtualization Server (Hyper-V): This profile is optimized for Microsoft’s Hyper-V* virtualization environment. Selecting this profile will disable Data Center Bridging (DCB) in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.*
• Storage + Virtualization: This profile is optimized for a combination of storage and virtualization requirements.
• Low Latency: This profile is optimized to minimize network latency.

How does the software choose which advanced settings to optimize?
Performance profiles optimize advanced settings based on the server role, the operating system, and the adapter.

Which performance profile should I select?
Intel® PROSet automatically selects certain profiles based on detected system configuration.
You can manually select a performance profile. Choose the profile that comes closest to matching the primary server role.

Can I still make manual changes to advanced settings after applying a profile?
Yes, if you make manual changes to advanced settings after applying a profile, the profile name will display as Custom Settings.