Overview
They can also act as a iSCSI Hardware Initiator by use of an optional Feature on Demand Key (FoD Key). They are also capable of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in this kind of set up a Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF) is required this might be part of your 10Gbs switch but be careful as it is not always the case.
Operating Modes
IBM Virtual Fabric Mode (vNIC1)Switch Independent Mode (vNIC2)
pNIC Mode
The members of the Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter family have the following features and benefits:
- Dual-channel, 10 Gbps Ethernet controller
- Line-rate 10 GbE performance
- 2 SFP+ empty cages to support either SFP+ SR or twin-ax copper connections
- SFP+ SR link is with SFP+ SR optical module with LC connectors
- SFP+ twin-ax copper link is with SFP+ direct attached copper module/cable
- TCIP/IP stateless offloads
- TCP chimney offload
- Hardware parity, CRC, ECC, and other advanced error checking
- PCI Express 2.0 x8 host interface
- Low-profile form-factor or slot-less mezzanine card form-factor design
- IPv4/IPv6 TCP, UDP checksum offload
- VLAN insertion and extraction
- Support for jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes
- Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) 2.0 network boot support
- Interrupt coalescing
- Load balancing and failover support
- Based on Emulex OneConnect technology and including FCoE and iSCSI support as a feature
- Simplifies I/O hardware choices for IT managers
- Maximizes I/O consolidation with high-performance 10GbE ports
- One network infrastructure reduces CapEx
- One management console reduces OpEx
- Leverages existing IT investments
- Deploy and manage this and other Emulex OneConnect-based adapters with OneCommand Manager
Configuration
Only 3 of the channels (index) are in use.Channel 2 index 1, 40% = 4Gbs, LAN TrafficEach channel is in a separate switch for redundancy.The channels are called vNics which are members of vNic Groups. There is a bit of a limiting factor here which may or may not be a problem for you, when you add a vNic to a vNic Group you specify a VLAN and a uplink port, when the VLAN tag gets stripped off as it leaves the vNic Group. I am using the uplink ports direct to Cisco switches which are Trunk ports for the LAN Traffic. But in my scenario I have the uplink ports for the iSCSI as direct to the ports the IBM Storwize V7000 10Gbs ports are connected to.------- Diagram to follow --------------
These adapters in conjunction with certain switches can be very flexible and save you time and space with network cables. The virtual fabric means that the 2 channels of the card can be slit into 4 channels giving a total of 8 Virtual Network Cards (vNIC) which gets presented to the OS as seperate NIC's.
The Emulex VFA III adapter in conjuction with the IBM G8124E switch can operate in several different modes, IBM Virtual Fabric Mode (also known as vNIC1), switch independant mode (alson known as vNIC2) and pNIC mode
This will only work with an IBM RackSwitch G8124E and G8264. In this mode, the Emulex adapter communicates with the IBM switch to obtain vNIC parameters (using DCBX). A special tag is added within each data packet and is later removed by the NIC and/or switch for each vNIC group to maintain separation of the virtual data paths.
The adapter works with any 10 Gb Ethernet 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.
In vNIC mode, each physical port is divided into four virtual ports for a maximum of eight (8) virtual NICs per adapter. The default bandwidth for each vNIC is 2.5 Gbps. Bandwidth for each vNIC can be configured via the IBM 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 four vNICs per physical port. In IBM Virtual Fabric Mode, you can change the bandwidth allocations through the IBM switch user interfaces without requiring a reboot of the server.
vNIC bandwidth allocation and metering is performed by both the switch and the VFA. In such a case, a bidirectional virtual channel of an assigned bandwidth is established between them for every defined vNIC.
In vNIC1 mode, storage protocols (FCoE and iSCSI) on vNICs are not supported, this means that the FoD Key (Feature on Demand) harwdare initiator will not work.
vNIC bandwidth allocation and metering is only performed by VFA itself. In such a case, a unidirectional virtual channel is established where the bandwidth management is only performed for the outgoing traffic on a VFA side (server-to-switch). The incoming traffic (switch-to-server) uses the all available physical port bandwidth, as there is no metering performed on either the VFA or a switch side.
In vNIC2 mode, when storage protocols are enabled on the Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapters, six vNICs (three per physical port) are Ethernet, and two vNICs (one per physical port) are either iSCSI or FCoE.
In pNIC mode the adapter operates as a standard dual-port 10 Gbps Ethernet adapter, and it functions with any 10 GbE switch. In pNIC mode, with the Emulex FCoE/iSCSI License, the card operates in a traditional Converged Network Adapter (CNA) mode with two Ethernet ports and two storage ports (iSCSI or FCoE) available to the operating system.
Features
The configuration I am using in a VMware environment is a follows.Channel 1 index 1, 40% = 4Gbs, LAN Traffic
Channel 1 index 2, 20% = 2Gbs, vMotion
Channel 1 index 3, 40% = 4Gbs, iSCSI Software initiator (VMware and V7000 don't support hardware initiator)
Channel 2 index 2, 20% = 2Gbs, vMotion
Channel 2 index 3, 40% = 4Gbs, iSCSI Software initiator (VMware and V7000 don't support hardware initiator)
The bandwidths for each index are managed on the switch and can be changed on the fly if need be, IBM G8124E or compatible switch are required if you want to configure the bandwidths at switch level. The bandwidths can be done at card level but I am not doing that.
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