Chapter 21. Unified Fabric Port - Lenovo Flex System Fabric CN4093 Application Manual

Chapter 21. Unified Fabric Port

© Copyright Lenovo 2017
Unified Fabric Port (UFP) is a cost‐effective way to allocate, share and dynamically
control network bandwidth between a server and a switch. UFP lets you create
multiple virtual connections. The UFP protocol is a link‐level protocol that runs a
separate instance for each physical communication link established between a
server NIC and a switch port. Virtualizing the ports allows you to separate or
aggregate port traffic by applying the network policies defined on the switch.
Virtualization lessens bottlenecks and provides higher bandwidth while
consolidating equipment use.
UFP provides a switch fabric component to control NICs. The server operating
system (OS) or hypervisor recognizes each subdivided link (channel) as an
independent physical NIC. Each channel has a unique identity and profile that
defines its properties and functionality. The server communicates with the switch
over the channel as defined in the channel profile. The channels share the
high‐speed physical link bandwidth.
For each channel, the vNIC on the server side communicates with virtual port on
the switch side. Any 10 Gbps internal server port can be configured as a UFP port.
Figure 37. UFP vPorts
Blade Server
OS or
Hypervisor
The UFP protocol has the following operation categories:
 Channel Initialization: The server NIC and the switch port negotiate the number
of channels and establish channel identifiers. Each UFP channel has a data
component and a control component. The two components have the same UFP
channel ID.
 Channel Control: For an established channel, the switch can modify
configurable channel properties by sending a control message on the UFP
channel. While the channel ID is the same for the control and data components,
the destination MAC address of the control message frame is a well‐known
address 01-80-C2-00-00-03.
 Discovery Capability: UFP can discover other ports that are UFP enabled. Once
you enable UFP, you can check the information statistics for established
channels.
NIC
Physical
VNIC
NIC Port Switch Port
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
Internal
Lenovo
vPort
Switch
vPort
vPort
vPort
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