Flex-10 overview – HP Virtual Connect 4Gb Fibre Channel Module for c-Class BladeSystem User Manual
Page 160
Virtual Connect server profiles 160
For more information, see "iSCSI and FCoE port assignments (on page
)" and "Creating FCoE HBA
connections for a BL890c i4 (on page
)."
•
FC profile connection entries are mapped to blades such that all of the FC HBAs on the first blade are
mapped first, then the HBAs on the second blade, and so on. When a profile is first created, it has
enough FC profile connections for the HBAs on one blade. The maximum number of FC connections
allowed is 4 times the original number of entries.
Rare situations exist where VCM is not able to retrieve information about all of the blades in a multi-blade
server, such as certain hardware failures that keep a blade from being in a normal state prior to applying
power. In such cases, VCM displays the Major error status icon. Where text is shown with the icon, the text
is “Missing Data”. This indicates a serious problem with the multi-blade server that needs to be fixed. VCM
cannot properly map profile connections to a server when it is in this state.
Integrity servers do not support iSCSI.
For more information, see "Appendix A: Using Virtual Connect with nPartitions (on page
)."
Flex-10 overview
Flex-10 technology is exclusive to Virtual Connect environments. When Flex-10-enabled 10Gb NICs are
connected to an HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb Ethernet Module or HP Virtual Connect Flex-10/10D
Module, each NIC port becomes four individual NICs, called FlexNICs.
Although these four FlexNICs share a single 10Gb physical interface, Virtual Connect is able to keep traffic
for the FlexNICs isolated, and each FlexNIC is assigned to one or more distinct Virtual Connect networks.
Each FlexNIC can be assigned a different transmit bandwidth (from 100Mb to 10Gb), which is enforced by
hardware mechanisms. The FlexNICs share a total of 10Gb, so one could be set to 5Gb, one could be set
to 1Gb, and the remaining two could each be set to 2Gb. Using the optimized bandwidth feature, you can
set a preferred speed to guarantee the minimum bandwidth for the port, and also a maximum bandwidth.