HP BL260c HP Flex-10 technology - Page 4

Bandwidth constraints on multiple, concurrent production applications such as iSCSI and virtual machine migration Limited separation of production applications Limited dedicated redundant backup No room for advanced services such as NIC teaming2 As an example, HP ProLiant c-Class blade servers limit the number of interconnect bay modules, requiring a trade-off among Fibre Channel, Ethernet, InfiniBand, and other network types. For Fibre Channel and Ethernet, there is a practical limit of six NICs and two host bus adapters (HBAs). HP Flex-10 for Virtual Connect With adoption of 10GbE, the problem is not bandwidth; it is the lack of ability to direct, partition, and regulate data streams for efficient operation. HP is answering these issues with Flex-10, the next phase of HP Virtual Connect Technology. As stated in the introduction of this paper, Flex-10 technology is hardware-based. Hardware-based FlexNICs eliminate the processor overhead required to operate virtualized NICs in a virtual machine environment. Flex-10 also utilizes the capabilities of VC to manage up to 24 FlexNICs on a single, half-height BladeSystem server which keeps the respective data traffic moving through each FlexNIC. New capabilities supported by Flex-10 technology The unique set of capabilities provided by Flex-10 makes 10GbE more flexible and efficient and enhances the ability of VC to consolidate servers and manage services. Implementing a hardware-based technology within a virtual architecture can lead to confusion about what Flex-10 technology is, and what it is not. This section expands on the basic ideas and descriptions used for Flex-10 technology. Flex-10 NIC device Flex-10 NIC devices are dual-port 10Gb LAN on Motherboard (LOM) devices and mezzanine cards that support up to four FlexNICs on each port. The Flex-10 device contains eight separate PCI functions, four per port, that enable the FlexNICs. FlexNIC A FlexNIC is an actual PCI-e function recognized by the server ROM as an individual NIC. A FlexNIC is not a virtual NIC contained in a software layer. The administrator controls the transmit bandwidth available to each FlexNIC. Each FlexNIC can be fine tuned from 100Mb to 10Gb through the VC interface. Flex-10 port A Flex-10 port is a single 10Gb full-duplex internal midplane connection between the Flex-10 NIC device and the Virtual Connect Flex-10 10GbE interconnect module. Virtual Connect Flex-10 10GbE interconnect module This module recognizes Flex-10 connections from the server as part of a Virtual Connect server profile. The module also supports non-Flex-10, 10Gb NICs and traditional 1Gb LOMs and mezzanine cards. Like other Virtual Connect interconnect modules, it is not a traditional switch device, but rather an IEEE-compliant Ethernet bridging device. 2 Information on HP teaming can be found at - http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/teaming.html 4