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The 3 Gb SAS Passthrough Expansion Card is a 2-port PCIe CIOv form factor card. The
output from the ports on this card is routed through the BladeCenter mid-plane to I/O switch
bays 3 and 4.
Fibre Channel adapters
The PS703 and PS704 blades support direct or SAN connection to devices using Fibre
Channel adapters and the appropriate pass-through or Fibre Channel switch modules in the
BladeCenter chassis. Fibre Channel expansion cards are available in both form factors and in
4 Gb and 8 Gb data rates.
The two ports on CIOv form factor expansion cards are connected to BladeCenter I/O switch
module bays 3 and 4. The two Fibre Channel ports on a CFFh expansion card connect to
BladeCenter H or HT I/O switch bays 8 and 10. The Fibre Channel ports on a CFFh form
factor adapter are not supported for use in a BladeCenter S chassis.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
A new emerging protocol, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), is being developed within T11
as part of the Fibre Channel Backbone 5 (FC-BB-5) project. It is not meant to displace or
replace FC. FCoE is an enhancement that expands FC into the Ethernet by combining two
leading-edge technologies (FC and Ethernet). This evolution of FCoE makes network
consolidation a reality; the combination of Fibre Channel and Ethernet enables a
consolidated network that maintains the resiliency, efficiency, and seamlessness of the
existing FC-based data center.
Figure 2-20 shows a configuration using BladeCenter FCoE components.
IBM POWER7 blades each
with a Converged Network
Adapter
Figure 2-20 FCoE connections in IBM BladeCenter
For more information about FCoE, read An Introduction to Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and
Fibre Channel over Convergence Enhanced Ethernet, REDP-4493, available from the
following web page:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4493.html
The QLogic 2-port 10 Gb Converged Network Adapter is a CFFh form factor card. The ports
on this card are connected to BladeCenter H and HT I/O switch module bays 7 and 9. In
these bays a passthrough or FCoE-capable I/O module can provide connectivity to a
62
IBM BladeCenter PS703 and PS704 Technical Overview and Introduction
BladeCenter H
Internal
connections
QLogic Virtual Fabric
Extension Module with
8Gb Fibre Channel
ports
BNT Virtual Fabric
10Gb Switch Module
with 10Gb Ethernet
ports
SAN
LAN
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