Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapt - Page 169

Using Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 4: Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapter User Guide Viewing and Configuring Resource Reservations NOTES: Resource Reservation information is only available for Broadcom NetXtreme II adapters and VBD drivers. Not all offload technologies are available with all adapters. The Resource Reservations section shows the number of connections allocated to an offload technology: TOE and iSCSI. TCP Offload Engine (TOE) for accelerating TCP over 1 GbE and 10 GbE. Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) offload for accelerating network storage access featuring centralized boot functionality (iSCSI boot). You can also view the number of unlicensed resources and unallocated resources. TOE and iSCSI can only be configured on certain adapters and require a license key. License keys are installed on the motherboard for use with LOMs and are preprogrammed in add-in NICs. TOE is a technology best suited for long-term TCP connections. TOE used in conjunction with applications that primarily deal with short-term connections may see suboptimal performance when compared to not using TOE. A short-term connection is a TCP connection that is established for only a few seconds at most, often less than one second. The overhead of establishing and tearing down the TCP connection with short-term connections may diminish the benefit that TOE provides. An example of an application that uses short-term connections is a web server that is not behind a load balancer. TCP connections for HTTP sessions are very short-lived and last only long enough to serve up a web page, after which the TCP connection is terminated. On the other hand, the same web server behind a load balancer benefits greatly from TOE since the TCP connections are long-lived between the web server and the load balancer. In contrast, a backup application is very likely to benefit from TOE since backup applications establish long-term connections between the server and the client. To view resource reservations 1. Click the name of the Broadcom NetXtreme II system device in the Explorer View pane. 2. From the Resource Reservations section, select the property you want to set. 3. Click Apply to confirm the changes to all properties. Click Reset to return the properties to their original values. To configure resource reservations 1. Select Reserved Resources for the Offload Configuration setting. Reservations allocate the minimum number of connections per technology. See Table 1 for the maximum number of connections available for various configurations. 2. Click First Come First Served to allow connections on a first-come-first-served basis to any enabled offload technology (TOE or iSCSI) as long as resources are available. Otherwise, click Reserved Resources to set the maximum number of connections for each offload technology. This option is not available for 10 Gbps network adapters. 3. If allocating TOE connections, select the TCP Offload Engine (TOE) check box and slide the bar or enter a number in the value box. This is the maximum number of connections available for TOE offload. 4. If allocating iSCSI connections, select the iSCSI check box and slide the bar or enter a number in the value box. This is the maximum number of connections available for iSCSI offload. 5. After the configurations are complete, click Apply to save the settings or click Reset to revert back to the previous settings. A chart of the resource allocations appears below the resource configurations. 6. If prompted, reboot the system. Table 1: Maximum Number of Offload Connections Offload First Come First Served Reserved Resources Maximum Number of Connections TOE only Selected - 1024 TOE only - Selected 864 iSCSI only Selected - Between 7 and 100 iSCSI only - Selected 28 Configuring the IP Address for iSCSI Offload For iSCSI-booted adapters, the Configurations tab is not available and you will not be able to perform this procedure. To set the IP address of the iSCSI HBA for iSCSI offload The iSCSI Management section of the Configurations tab allows you to set the IP address of the iSCSI HBA when using iSCSI protocol to offload network processing from the CPU to the Broadcom network adapter. file:///T|/htdocs/NETWORK/BroadCom/71921/NetXtremeII/en/bacs.htm[9/26/2012 3:29:48 PM]