Table 3. Flexaddress Features And Benefits; Figure 17. Flexaddress Screen In The Cmc - Dell PowerEdge M1000e Technical Manual

The CMC manages the following functions specific to FlexAddress:

Provides a user interface for enabling or disabling the FlexAddress feature — on a per-blade-slot
basis, a per-fabric basis, or both

Identifies and reports device information for each of the supported fabric types — LOMs,
Ethernet and Fibre Channel mezzanine cards

Validates all the components of the FlexAddress feature — SD card validation, System BIOS, I/O
controller firmware, CMC firmware and iDRAC firmware versions

Reports FlexAddress feature status for each of the blade slots

Provides information for both server-assigned (factory-programmed) and chassis-assigned
(FlexAddress) addresses on each supported device

Logs any system-level errors that may prevent the FlexAddress feature from being used on the
chassis or on a given device
Features
Locking the WWN of the Fibre Channel controller and
the MAC of the Ethernet and iSCSI controller into a
blade slot instead of to the blade's hardware
Servicing or replacing a blade or I/O mezzanine card
and maintain all address mapping to Ethernet and
storage fabrics
Easy and highly reliable booting from Ethernet or
Fibre Channel based Storage Area Networks (SANs)
All MAC/WWN/iSCSIs in the chassis will never change
Fast and efficient integration into existing network
infrastructure
FlexAddress: simple and easy to implement
FlexAddress SD card with a unique pool of
MAC/WWNs — can be enabled on a single enclosure
at a given time, until disabled
Works with all I/O modules including Cisco, Brocade,
and Dell PowerConnect switches as well as pass-
through modules
PowerEdge M1000e Technical Guide
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Figure 17. FlexAddress screen in the CMC

Table 3. FlexAddress features and benefits
Benefits
Easily replace blades without network management
effort
Ease-of-management
An almost no-touch blade replacement
Fewer future address name headaches
No need to learn a new management tool
Low cost versus switch-based solution
Simple and quick to deploy
No need for the user to configure
No risk of duplicates on your network or SAN
Choice being independent of switch or pass-through
module