Npar Configuration; Nic Partitioning Options - Lenovo 8200 Series Installation Manual

NPAR Configuration

This section defines NPAR configuration, options, and management tools you can use to set up NPAR on
the 8200 and 3200 Series Adapters.
In addition to defining NPAR, this section describes:
• "NIC Partitioning Options" on page 46
• "Personality Changes" on page 47
• "Quality of Service" on page 48
• "eSwitch" on page 48
• "Configuration Management Tools" on page 49

NIC Partitioning Options

The NPAR feature in 8200 and 3200 Series Adapters provides the ability to create multiple PCIe physical
functions for each physical 10 GbE port on the adapter. Each PCIe function appears as an independent
interface to the host operating system or hypervisor.
When the 8200 and 3200 Series Adapters are configured as Ethernet-only, each adapter contains eight
Ethernet functions.
By default, NPAR functionality is disabled on the adapters, having only two Ethernet functions enabled.
Depending on the feature personality mapping supported on the adapter, you can enable additional
Ethernet or storage functions.
The PCI function number assignment is as follows:
• Functions 0 and 1 are always NIC, function 0 for port 0 and function 1 for port 1; any of the other
functions can be individually enabled or disabled.
• NIC, iSCSI, and FCoE have fixed function numbers.
• Functions 2 and 3 can only be NIC personalities.
• Functions 4 and 5 can be iSCSI or NIC personalities.
• Functions 6 and 7 can be FCoE or NIC personalities.
• You can configure only one iSCSI and one FCoE personality for each physical port.
The 8200 and 3200 Series Adapters support a maximum of 64 Layer-2 MAC address filters across all
partitions, which limits the number of virtual network adapters that can be created on a partitioned NIC.
The NIC driver evenly distributes the number of filters across all NIC partitions.
For example, if the NIC adapter has four NIC partitions, two NIC partitions per physical port, then each NIC
partition gets 16 filters (64/4 = 16). In this case, do not create more than 16 virtual network adapters on any
NIC function that is configured to be used by a Hyper-V network virtualization stack.
The VLAN and teaming solutions on partitioned NIC functions have the following restrictions:
• A failsafe team cannot be created using NIC functions that belong to the same physical port. For
example, physical function 2 (PF2) cannot be a backup for PF0 because both functions are partitions of
the same physical port.
• 802.3ad link aggregation teams are not allowed on partitioned NIC functions.
8200 Series Converged Network Adapter and 3200 Series Intelligent Ethernet Adapter
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