Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCenter
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Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM
BladeCenter
IBM Redbooks Product Guide
The Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II and Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter Advanced II are
enhancements to the existing IBM® BladeCenter® Virtual Fabric portfolio. These adapters allow IBM
clients to simplify their I/O infrastructure by reducing the number of switches needed inside the chassis.
The Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II is a dual-port 10 Gb Ethernet card that supports 1 Gbps or
10 Gbps traffic, or up to eight virtual NIC (vNIC) devices.
The virtual NICs are configured to meet the client's mix of network connectivity and throughput demands
for today's complex server application environments. Each physical 10 Gbps port can be divided into four
virtual ports with bandwidth allocation in 100 Mbps increments to the maximum 10 Gbps per physical port.
The Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II Advanced adds FCoE and iSCSI hardware initiator
functionality.
The Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II supports the BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module in IBM
Virtual Fabric Mode. A firmware update is planned that will enable this card to function in Switch
Independent Mode with other IBM BladeCenter 10 GbE switch offerings from Cisco and Brocade, and the
10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module for IBM BladeCenter. Figure 1 shows the adapter.
Figure 1. Emulex 10GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II for IBM BladeCenter
Did you know?
This adapter is based on industry-standard PCIe architecture and offers the flexibility to operate as a
Virtual NIC Fabric Adapter or as a dual-port 10Gb or 1Gb Ethernet device. Because this adapter supports
up to eight virtual NICs on a single dual-port Ethernet adapter, you see benefits in cost, power/cooling,
and data center footprint by deploying less hardware. The adapter enables you to configure up to 12 NIC
devices on a single blade server: eight virtual NICs with the Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter II plus
the two onboard NICs plus two from a CIOv expansion card.
