Vc Operation In The Flex-10 Environment; Operational Constraints For The Initial Release Of Flex-10 - Compaq BL10e - HP ProLiant - 512 MB RAM Introduction Manual

VC operation in the Flex-10 environment

VC has numerous functions that are associated with server NIC connectivity. Wherever possible, the
goal is to treat the FlexNIC exactly like a server NIC, but this is not always possible. Table 2
describes which VC features will be affected.
Table 2. Affected Flex-10 functions
Function
Dynamic Network Assignment
Port Monitoring
Fast MAC Cache
Internet Group Management
Protocol (IGMP) snooping
Private Networks
Server VLAN handling
SmartLink

Operational constraints for the initial release of Flex-10

In this initial release, Flex-10 supports only static configuration of NIC parameters. Changing
parameters like the transmit bandwidth will require a server reboot. The Flex-10 initial release will
support the Virtual Connect Manager "shared server link" feature for each FlexNIC.
This section describes additional limitations present in the initial release of Flex-10:
The same network cannot be assigned to more than one FlexNIC.
VCM cannot drop the link on a single FlexNIC.
Port speed is not supported on non FlexNICs. Non Flex-10 ports do not support bandwidth limiting.
Fully supported within the constraints of each FlexNIC on a physical
port being on a different vNet. If a user tries to attach a FlexNIC to a
vNet that already has another FlexNIC on the same physical port, the
assignment will fail and an error will be indicated. The server must be
rebooted for any FlexNIC network assignment changes to take effect.
Port monitoring can be enabled per physical port. The traffic from all
FlexNICs on a single physical port will be visible on the monitoring
port. The customer can configure filters on his/her network analyzer to
filter unwanted traffic.
Failover is fully supported.
Fully supported, and the bit map will be extended to sub-ports which
represent physical functions on the switch.
Fully supported. Any server NICs and FlexNICs in a private network
cannot directly communicate with other server NICs and FlexNICs in
the same network. These server ports can only send traffic upstream
through the VC Domain and out the uplinks to external customer data
center networks. In the reverse direction, there is no restriction on
upstream ports.
The initial Flex-10 release supports server both VLAN tag tunneling
and VLAN mapping on FlexNICs
SmartLink not supported on individual FlexNICs but will continue to be
supported from the physical port point of view. In this Flex-10 release,
VC is not capable of dropping the link to a single FlexNIC. Therefore,
the physical link will drop only when all networks assigned to all
FlexNICs on a given physical port have "SmartLink" option checked,
and all of their uplinks are broken. Conversely, as soon as the first
vNet has a single port restored, the physical port, and therefore all
FlexNICs, will have the link restored. This functions in a similar fashion
to non-Flex-10 ports with multiple networks assigned.
SmartLink continues to operate normally for traditional 1Gb NICs in a
VC environment and will be fully functional for Flex-10 operation in a
future release of VC firmware.
Status
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