HP BL260c HP Flex-10 technology - Page 14

VC operation in the Flex-10 environment VC has numerous functions that are associated with server NIC connectivity. Wherever possible, the goal is to treat the FlexNIC exactly like a server NIC, but this is not always possible. Table 2 describes which VC features will be affected. Table 2. Affected Flex-10 functions Function Dynamic Network Assignment Port Monitoring Fast MAC Cache Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping Private Networks Server VLAN handling SmartLink Status Fully supported within the constraints of each FlexNIC on a physical port being on a different vNet. If a user tries to attach a FlexNIC to a vNet that already has another FlexNIC on the same physical port, the assignment will fail and an error will be indicated. The server must be rebooted for any FlexNIC network assignment changes to take effect. Port monitoring can be enabled per physical port. The traffic from all FlexNICs on a single physical port will be visible on the monitoring port. The customer can configure filters on his/her network analyzer to filter unwanted traffic. Failover is fully supported. Fully supported, and the bit map will be extended to sub-ports which represent physical functions on the switch. Fully supported. Any server NICs and FlexNICs in a private network cannot directly communicate with other server NICs and FlexNICs in the same network. These server ports can only send traffic upstream through the VC Domain and out the uplinks to external customer data center networks. In the reverse direction, there is no restriction on upstream ports. The initial Flex-10 release supports server both VLAN tag tunneling and VLAN mapping on FlexNICs SmartLink not supported on individual FlexNICs but will continue to be supported from the physical port point of view. In this Flex-10 release, VC is not capable of dropping the link to a single FlexNIC. Therefore, the physical link will drop only when all networks assigned to all FlexNICs on a given physical port have "SmartLink" option checked, and all of their uplinks are broken. Conversely, as soon as the first vNet has a single port restored, the physical port, and therefore all FlexNICs, will have the link restored. This functions in a similar fashion to non-Flex-10 ports with multiple networks assigned. SmartLink continues to operate normally for traditional 1Gb NICs in a VC environment and will be fully functional for Flex-10 operation in a future release of VC firmware. Operational constraints for the initial release of Flex-10 In this initial release, Flex-10 supports only static configuration of NIC parameters. Changing parameters like the transmit bandwidth will require a server reboot. The Flex-10 initial release will support the Virtual Connect Manager "shared server link" feature for each FlexNIC. This section describes additional limitations present in the initial release of Flex-10: The same network cannot be assigned to more than one FlexNIC. VCM cannot drop the link on a single FlexNIC. Port speed is not supported on non FlexNICs. Non Flex-10 ports do not support bandwidth limiting. 14