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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Supported servers

The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) is supported in the IBM BladeCenter servers listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Supported servers

Part

Expansion card

Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) 49Y4235 N N N Y N N N N N N N N

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

number

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

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Supported BladeCenter chassis and I /O modules

IBM BladeCenter chassis support is based on the blade server type in which the expansion card is
installed. Consult the ServerProven Web site to see which chassis each blade server type is supported in:

http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/.

Table 3 lists the supported chassis and I/O module combinations that the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter
(CFFh) supports, in either standard physical port mode (pNIC) or virtual NIC (vNIC) mode.

Table 3. I/O modules supported with the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh)

Description Part number

vNIC mode

BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module 46C7191 N N Y N Y N N

BNT 6-port 10 Gb High Speed Switch Module 39Y9267 N N N N N N N

10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module 46M6181 N N N N N N N

Cisco Nexus 4001I Switch Module 46M6071 N N N N N N N

pNIC mode

BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module 46C7191 N N Y N Y N N

BNT 6-port 10 Gb High Speed Switch Module 39Y9267 N N Y N Y N N

10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module 46M6181 N N Y N Y N N

Cisco Nexus 4001I Switch Module 46M6071 N N Y N Y N N

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In BladeCenter H, the ports of CFFh cards are routed through the midplane to I/O bays 7, 8, 9, and 10, as
shown in Figure 3. The BladeCenter HT is similar in that the CFFh cards are also routed through the
midplane to I/O bays 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Figure 3. IBM BladeCenter H I/O topology showing the I/O paths from CFFh expansion cards

The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) requires that two I/O modules be installed in bays 7 and 9 of
the BladeCenter H and HT chassis, as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Locations of I/O modules required to connect to the expansion card

Expansion card I/O bay 7 I/O bay 8 I/O bay 9 I/O bay 10

Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) Supported I/O

module

Not used Supported I/O

module

Not used

MAC addresses are assigned to the expansion card. In Virtual Fabric Adapter mode (vNIC mode) each of
the eight virtual ports is assigned a MAC address. In 2-port 10 Gb Ethernet mode (pNIC mode), each of
the two physical ports is assigned a MAC addresses.

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Popular configurations

This section shows a configuration that uses the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh).

Figure 4 shows the use of the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) to route either two physical ports or
eight virtual ports to the BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Modules installed in the BladeCenter chassis.
Two BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Modules are installed in bay 7 and bay 9 of the BladeCenter H
chassis. All connections between the controller, card, and the switch modules are internal to the chassis.
No cabling is needed.

Figure 4. Configuration using the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh)

Depending on how you configure the switch and expansion card, you can get either:

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Eight virtual Ethernet ports (Virtual Fabric Adapter or vNIC mode). Each virtual port can be configured
to operate at 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps, up to a total maximum of 10 Gb per physical port. The default
bandwidth is 2.5 Gb per virtual port.

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Two 1 Gb or 10 Gb Ethernet ports (physical port or pNIC mode).

The components used in this configuration are listed in Table 5.

Table 5. Components used when connecting Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) to two BNT Virtual
Fabric 10Gb Switch Modules

Diagram
reference

Part number/
machine type

7870 IBM BladeCenter HS22 1 to 14

49Y4235 Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) 1 per server

8852 or 8740/8750 BladeCenter H or BladeCenter HT 1

46C7191 BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module 2

44W4408 IBM 10GBase-SR SFP+ Transceiver Up to 20*

Description Quantity

* To communicate outside of the chassis, you must have either one SFP+ transceiver or SFP+
direct-attached cable (DAC) for each of the external 10 Gb ports on the BNT 10Gb High Speed Switch
Module that you wish to enable.

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Operating system support

The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) supports the following operating systems:

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Datacenter Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Datacenter x64 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Enterprise Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Standard Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Standard x64 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x86 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x64 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Enterprise x86 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Enterprise x64 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard x86 Edition

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Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard x64 Edition

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SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 for x86

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SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 for AMD64/EM64T

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SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for x86

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SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for AMD64/EM64T

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server Edition

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server x64 Edition

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VMware ESX 3.5

Support for operating systems is based on the combination of the expansion card and the blade server on
which it is installed. See the IBM ServerProven Web site for the latest information about the specific
versions and service packs supported: http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/. Select
the blade server, and then select the expansion card to see the supported operating systems.

Related publications

For more information refer to the following resources:

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Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter Installation and User's Guide

http://www.ibm.com/support

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Emulex product page for the Virtual Fabric Adapter:

http://www.emulex.com/solutions/ibm-bladecenter-virtual-fabric/emulex-virtual-fabric-adapter.html

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IBM BladeCenter Interoperability Guide

http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-5073016

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IBM Redbooks publication

IBM BladeCenter Products and Technology

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247523.html

:

, SG24-7523:

:

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Notices

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This document was created or updated on October 19, 2009.

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