Dell Emulex Family of Adapters - Manual (Page 229)

OneCommand™ Manager Application P010066-01A Rev. A
8. Managing Adapters and Ports
OCe14000-Series Adapters
229
For Dell NPar adapters the Adapter Configuration tab is different than for the other
adapters. There are no choices in the Next Boot Configuration for single personality,
multichannel, or custom configurations. Instead there is a single checkbox to enable or
disable NPar and an NPar Configuration table to configure NPar partition protocol and
bandwidth assignments.
When NPar is enabled, the OneCommand Manager application allows you (subject to
restrictions in the adapter's IPL) to configure up to sixteen functions on a single port
adapter and up to eight partitions per port on a two port adapter.
When NPar is enabled, the minimum bandwidth for each partition will be the same or
nearly the same for all partitions. For four partition ports, the minimum bandwidth for
each partition is 25%. For eight partition ports, the first four partitions will get 13% and
the last four partitions will get 12%. The maximum bandwidth for all partitions will
default to 100%. You can change the bandwidths before applying the changes.
However, the minimum bandwidths must add up to 100%.
Note: NParEP must be available to support up to sixteen functions on an adapter.
OCe14000-series adapters automatically support NParEP. However, the
system’s motherboard must support NParEP, it must be enabled in the system
BIOS, and the operating system must support NParEP. On Linux and VMware
systems, BIOS SR-IOV must be enabled. See the Dell instructions for enabling
BIOS SR-IOV.
If these conditions are not met, although you may configure all sixteen
functions, only eight functions will be present and discovered by the
OneCommand Manager application after a reboot.
Note: SR-IOV is not supported with RoCE configurations.
For storage protocols, any of the second through fourth partitions can be configured to
run storage. However, if more than one storage protocol is configured, they must be
different storage protocols. The same storage protocol cannot be run on two partitions
on the same port.