Dell POWEREDGE M1000E - Manual (Page 4)

Quadport Capable Hardware for the M1000e Modular Chassis
Page 2
Introduction:
The Dell M1000e Modular chassis brings a rich assortment of IO capabilities into a relatively small space.
This document introduces QuadPort Mezzanine Cards and PowerConnect M6348 switch that further scales
Network density.
The M1000e Chassis, Blades and IO Modules
The M1000e chassis supports up to 16 Half Height server blades, 8 full height server blades or a logical mix of the
two. It also supports up to 6 IO Modules. We will focus on the Intel Quadport Gigabit ET Mezzanine card, the
Broadcom NetExtreme II 5709 Quad Port Ethernet Mezzanine Card, and the Dell PowerConnect M6348 switch
IOM.
IO Fabric Banks
Chassis IO is segregated into 3 discrete data paths by letter: A, B and C. These paths are described as “FABRICS”
and support Ethernet, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand. These discrete fabric paths are split into 2 IO “Banks”, bank one
and two. Each Blade IO adapter can have either 2 or 4 ports depending on capability. These ports are split out
evenly to IOM banks one and two to allow for redundancy. When you deploy your Ethernet, iSCSI or FibreChannel
networks, span their redundant links across banks one and two for maximum availability. We denote the discrete
IOM with the fabric Identifier and the Bank number.
Example: “A1” denotes Fabric “A” in bank “1”. “C2” Denotes Fabric “C” in Bank “2”. This translates into the
following logical mapping in figure one and the physical layout in figure two.
Figure 1 shows a half height blade with dual port LOMS and Mezzanine Cards and dual capable IOM’s. Figure 2
shows the numbering of each IOM slot and IOM banks one and two and six Dell Gigabit Ethernet pass-through
modules installed in all 6 IOM bays.
TechNote: “Quad port ” implies these components are fully compatible
with other Quadport devices. Quadport capable devices are also
compatible with “dual port” devices minus the availability of connectivity
with the 2 nd pair of IO channels