IBM Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter, Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBMBladeCenter At-a-glance Manual
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Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBM
BladeCenter
IBM BladeCenter at-a-glance guide
The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter is a dual-port 10 Gb Ethernet card that
supports 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps traffic, or up to eight virtual NIC 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.
Figure 1. Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) 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 10 Gb or 1 Gb Ethernet device. Because this adapter
supports up to eight virtual NICs on a single dual-port Ethernet adapter, you see potential 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 plus the two onboard NICs
plus two from a CIOv expansion card.
Adapter functionality can be enhanced through the future purchase of feature entitlements to enable
FCoE and iSCSI protocol support, delivering the industry’s first Universal Converged Network Adapter
and a future-proof connectivity solution for IBM BladeCenter.
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Part number information
Table 1. Ordering part number and feature code
Description Part number Feature code
Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter 49Y4235 5755
The part number includes the following items:
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One Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh)
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Documentation CD
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Important Notices flyer
Features
Data center managers today are looking to increase hardware utilization to meet the growing needs of
their organization and virtualization offers a very attractive value proposition. The next-generation IBM
BladeCenter HS22 servers offer the platform with balanced processor and memory to enable them to
create more VMs per server, but I/O is already becoming a bottleneck.
The IBM BladeCenter virtual fabric offering addresses these issues and extends these value propositions
to non-virtualized environments. This solution enables clients to get up to eight virtual ports that can be
tailored to meet the bandwidth requirements of the application. The key components for this offering
include the 2-port 10 Gb Virtual Fabric Adapter by Emulex and the Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module
from BNT.
This solution makes use of Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and can significantly help reduce
complexity and cost in virtualized environments by reducing switch costs up to 75%, reducing cable and
adapter costs up to 50%, and achieving better energy efficiency. At the same time, the virtual fabric
solution gives clients the opportunity to allocate and adjust bandwidth based on actual requirements and
have investment protection for next-generation technology like I/O convergence.
The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter has the following summary of features:
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Connection to either 1 Gb or 10 Gb data center infrastructure (1 Gb and 10 Gb auto-negotiation)
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PCI Express 2.0 x8 host interface
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IBM BladeCenter CFFh form factor; can be combined with a CIOv expansion card in the same server
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Operates either as an 8-port Virtual Fabric Adapter or as a 2-port 1/10 Gb Ethernet adapter
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Virtual port bandwidth allocation in 100 Mbps increments
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Supports up to eight virtual ports
Wake On LAN supportz
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Full-duplex (FDX) capability
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Serial Over LAN (SOL) and concurrent KVM (cKVM) support for enhanced BladeCenter management
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Bus-mastering support
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Direct memory access (DMA) support
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Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) support
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IPv4/IPv6 TCP, UDP checksum offload
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Large send offload (LSO)
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Large receive offload
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Receive side scaling (RSS)
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IPV4 TCP Chimney Offload
VLAN insertion and extractionz
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Jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes
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Load balancing and failover support including adapter fault tolerance (AFT), switch fault tolerance
(SFT), adaptive load balancing (ALB), teaming support, and IEEE 802.3ad
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Enhanced Ethernet (draft)
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Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) (P802.1Qaz)
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Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) (P802.1Qbb)
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Data Center Bridging Capabilities eXchange Protocol, CIN-DCBX and CEE-DCBX (P802.1Qaz)
iSCSI and FCoE support as a future feature entitlement purchasez
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Configurable from the BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module
Modes of operation
The expansion card has two modes of operation: standard physical port mode (pNIC) and virtual NIC
(vNIC) mode.
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In vNIC mode, each physical port appears to the blade server as four virtual NICs. The default
bandwidth for each vNIC is 2.5 Gbps. Bandwidth for each vNIC can be configured from 100 Mbps to
10 Gbps, up to a maximum of 10 Gb per virtual port. vNICs can also be configured to have 0
bandwidth if you must allocate the available bandwidth to fewer than eight vNICs. To support vNIC
mode operation, the expansion card must communicate with the BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch
Module, which provides independent control for each vNIC.
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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.
A future entitlement purchase will allow for up to two FCoE ports or two iSCSI ports. FCoE and iSCSI
ports can be used in combination with up to six Ethernet ports in vNIC mode, up to a maximum of
eight total virtual ports.
Operating environment
This adapter complies with temperature rating requirements for BladeCenter H and BladeCenter HT
chassis and is supported in the following environment:
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Temperature - Operating:
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10 to 52° C (50 to 125° F) at an altitude of 0 to 914 m (0 to 3,000 ft)
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10 to 49° C (50 to 120° F) at an altitude of 0 to 3,000 m (0 to 10,000 ft)
Temperature - Non-operating:z
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40 to 65°C (-40 to 149° F) at an altitude of 0 to 12,000 m (0 to 39,370 ft)
Humidityz
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Operating: 8 to 80%, noncondensing
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Non-operating: 5 to 80%, noncondensing
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