Maximum Number Of Nic Ports Assigned To An Lpar On Linux - Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 User Manual

Maximum number of NIC ports assigned
to an LPAR on Linux
When Linux is used and Fusion-io Flash drive is assigned to an LPAR, the maximum
number of NIC ports assigned to one LPAR is limited. If you assign NIC ports beyond the
upper limit, loading the driver and Linux startup might fail.
 For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5/6 x86_64
Up to 32 ports can be assigned.

Intel 10 Gb NIC uses 9 ports of resources per port. When assigning Intel 10 Gb NIC,

9-port resources are required for one port.
Emulex 10 Gb NIC uses 3 ports of resources for a port. When assigning Emulex 10

Gb NIC, 3-port resources are required for one port.
The following table shows the maximum number of ports to be assigned.

Number of ports to be assigned
Dedicated NIC
(Intel 1 Gb;
Broadcom 1 Gb)
Shared NIC/ Virtual
NIC (NIC2)
32
14
26
20
Maximum number of NIC ports assigned
to an LPAR on Windows
On Windows OS, the maximum number of NIC ports assigned to one LPAR is limited. If
you assign NIC ports beyond the upper limit, the following problems might occur.
OS installation might fail, or might take extremely longer time.

A temporary linkdown might occur when the OS is running.

 For Windows Server 2008/Windows Server 2008 R2 without SMP
configuration
The relation between the number of processors assigned to an LPAR and the

maximum number of ports to be assigned to the LPAR is shown below.
SMT disabled: Maximum number of ports = the number of processors x 2 + 6

SMT enabled: Maximum number of ports = {(the number of processors + 1) / 2}

x 2 + 6
Dedicated NIC (Intel Dedicated NIC
10 Gb): (Emulex 10 Gb):
9-port resources 3-port resources
used for 1 port used for 1 port
- -
2 -
- 2
- 4
1394
Maximum number
of ports
32
32
32
32