HP ProLiant BL660c HP BladeSystem Networking Reference Architecture: HP Virtua - Page 2

Executive Summary HP has revolutionized the way IT thinks about networking and server management. With the release of the HP ProLiant BladeSystem Generation 6 servers, along with Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet modules, HP provided a great platform for VMware vSphere. Virtual Connect Flex-10 is the world's first technology to divide and fine-tune 10Gb Ethernet network bandwidth at the server edge. When combined with Virtual Connect, the BladeSystem architecture streamlines the typical change processes for provisioning in the datacenter. HP has since evolved Virtual Connect Flex-10 to the next level: Virtual Connect FlexFabric modules. By combining the power of ProLiant BladeSystem Generation 7 servers and Virtual Connect, the Virtual Connect FlexFabric module allows customers to consolidate network connections and storage fabrics into a single module. This further reduces infrastructure cost and complexity by eliminating HBA adapters and Fibre Channel modules at the edge. These servers include virtualization friendly features such as larger memory capacity, dense population, room for additional mezzanine cards and 4 - 64 (with Intel Hyper-Threading technology enabled and AMD Opteron 6200-series) processing cores. The following ProLiant BL Servers ship standard with the NC551i FlexFabric Adapter:  BL465 G7  BL685 G7 The following ProLiant BL Servers ship with the NC553i FlexFabric Adapter:  BL460 G7  BL490 G7  BL620/680 G7 Additionally, the NC551m and NC553m provide support for the FlexFabric Adapter in ProLiant BladeSystem G6 servers. NOTE: Please check the latest NC551m1 and NC553m2 QuickSpecs for the official server support matrix. The ProLiant Generation 8 servers do not ship with a built-in adapter. Instead, HP offers a FlexLOM option to where customers can chose which FlexFabric Adapter vendor they want. Please review the server models QuickSpecs for support FlexLOM adapters. The FlexFabric Adapter introduces a new Physical Function called the FlexHBA. The FlexHBA, along with the FlexNIC, adds the unique ability to fine-tune each connection to adapt to your virtual server channels and workloads on-the-fly. The effect of using the Virtual Connect FlexFabric module is a reduction in the number of interconnect modules required to uplink outside of the enclosure, while still maintaining full redundancy across the service console, VMkernel, virtual machine (VM) networks and 1 http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/emulex/nc551m/index.html 2 http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/emulex/nc553m/index.html 2