IBM 10GBE User Manual

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Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCenter

IBM BladeCenter at-a-glance guide

The Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II and Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II are enhancements to the existing IBM® BladeCenter® Virtual Fabric portfolio. These adapters allow IBM clients to simplify their I/O infrastructure by reducing the number of switches needed inside the chassis. The Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II is a dual-port 10 Gb Ethernet card that supports 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps traffic, or up to eight virtual NIC (vNIC) devices.

The virtual NICs are configured to meet the client's mix of network connectivity and throughput demands for today's complex server application environments. Each physical 10 Gbps port can be divided into four virtual ports with bandwidth allocation in 100 Mbps increments to the maximum 10 Gbps per physical port. The Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced adds FCoE and iSCSI hardware initiator functionality.

The Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II supports the BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module in IBM Virtual Fabric Mode. A firmware update is planned that will enable this card to function in Switch Independent Mode with other IBM BladeCenter 10 GbE switch offerings from Cisco and Brocade, and the 10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module for IBM BladeCenter. Figure 1 shows the adapter.

Figure 1. Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCenter

Did you know?

This adapter is based on industry-standard PCIe architecture and offers the flexibility to operate as a Virtual NIC Fabric Adapter or as a dual-port 10Gb or 1Gb Ethernet device. Because this adapter supports up to eight virtual NICs on a single dual-port Ethernet adapter, you see benefits in cost, power/cooling, and data center footprint by deploying less hardware. The adapter enables you to configure up to 12 NIC devices on a single blade server: eight virtual NICs with the Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II plus the two onboard NICs plus two from a CIOv expansion card.

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCente

Part number information

Table 1. Ordering part number and feature code

Description Part number Feature code

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCenter 90Y3550 A1XG

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced for IBM BladeCenter 90Y3566 AIXH

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Advanced Upgrade for IBM BladeCenter 49Y4265 2436

The adapter part number includes the following items:

One Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II or Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced

Documentation CD

Important Notices flyer

The standard Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II can be upgraded to the same features as the Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced with the addition of the Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Advanced Upgrade option, part number 49Y4265.

Features

Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter II and Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II have these features:

Connection to either 1 Gb or 10 Gb data center infrastructure (1 Gb and 10 Gb auto-negotiation)

PCI Express 2.0 x8 host interface

IBM BladeCenter CFFh form factor, can be combined with a CIOv expansion card on the same blade server

It operates either as an 8-port virtual NIC or as a 2-port 1/10 Gb Ethernet adapter:

Virtual port bandwidth allocation in 100 Mbps increments

Supports up to eight virtual ports

Wake On LAN support z

Full-duplex (FDX) capability

Bus-mastering support

Direct memory access (DMA) support

Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) support

IPv4/IPv6 TCP, UDP checksum offload

Large send offload (LSO)

Large receive offload

Receive side scaling (RSS)

IPv4 TCP Chimney Offload

TCP Segmentation Offload

VLAN insertion and extraction z

Jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes

Load balancing and failover support including adapter fault tolerance (AFT), switch fault tolerance (SFT), adaptive load balancing (ALB), teaming support, and IEEE 802.3ad

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCente

Enhanced Ethernet (draft)

Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) (P802.1Qaz)

Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) (P802.1Qbb)

Data Center Bridging Capabilities eXchange Protocol, CIN-DCBX and CEE-DCBX (P802.1Qaz)

The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II provides FCoE and iSCSI hardware initiator support.

Supports Serial over LAN (SoL) and concurrent KVM (cKVM)

Supports Supports two vNIC modes: IBM Virtual Fabric Mode and Switch Independent Mode (Support for Switch Independent Mode will require a firmware upgrade which is expected in 4Q/2011.)

Modes of operation

The original Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter can be configured in pNIC or vNIC mode. The new Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II now offers two vNIC modes of operation in addition to pNIC mode:

IBM Virtual Fabric Mode, which is the same as vNIC mode on original Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter. This mode only works in conjunction with BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module installed in I/O module bays 7 and 9 in the chassis. In this mode, the Emulex adapter communicated with the switch module to obtain vNIC parameters (using DCBX). Also, a special tag within each data packet is added and later removed by the NIC and switch for each vNIC group to maintain separation of the virtual channels.

In vNIC mode, each physical port is divided into four virtual ports providing a total of eight virtual NICs per adapter. The default bandwidth for each vNIC is 2.5 Gbps. Bandwidth for each vNIC can be configured at the BNT switch from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps, up to a total of 10 Gb per physical port. The vNICs can also be configured to have 0 bandwidth if you must allocate the available bandwidth to fewer than eight vNICs. In IBM Virtual Fabric Mode, you can change the bandwidth allocations through the BNT switch user interfaces without requiring a reboot of the server.

When storage protocols are enabled on the Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II , six ports are Ethernet, and two ports are either iSCSI or FCoE

Switch Independent Mode, where the adapter works with the following switches:

BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module

Cisco Nexus 4001I Switch Module

10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module and a top-of-rack (TOR) switch

These switches must be installed in I/O module bays 7 and 9 in the chassis. Beyond the way that the adapter communicates with the switch, Switch Independent Mode offers the same capabilities as IBM Virtual Fabric Mode in terms of the number of vNICs and the bandwidth each can be configured to have. Switch Independent Mode extends the existing customer VLANs to the virtual NIC interfaces. The IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tag is essential to the separation of the vNIC groups by the NIC adapter or driver and the switch. The VLAN tags are added to the packet by the applications or drivers at each end station rather than by the switch.

Note: Support for Switch Independent Mode will require a firmware upgrade, which is expected in 4Q/2011.

In pNIC mode, the expansion card can operate as a standard 10 Gbps or 1 Gbps 2-port Ethernet expansion card. When in pNIC mode, the expansion card functions with any available 10 Gb switch or 10 Gb pass-thru module installed in I/O module bays 7 and 9.

In pNIC mode, the Advanced adapter or the Advanced upgrade operates in traditional Converged Network Adapter (CNA) mode with two ports of Ethernet and two ports of storage (iSCSI or FCoE) available to the operating system..

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCente

Supported servers

The Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II and Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced are supported in the IBM BladeCenter servers listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Supported servers

Expansion card

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II

N N N Y Y Y N N N N N N N N N N

Figure 2 shows where the CFFh card is installed in a BladeCenter server.

Figure 2. Location on the BladeCenter server planar where the CFFh card is installed

Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCente

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