vNIC bandwidth allocation and metering are performed only by VFA itself. In such a case, a
unidirectional virtual channel is established where the bandwidth management is performed only for
the outgoing traffic on a VFA side (server-to-switch). The incoming traffic (switch-to-server) uses
the all available physical port bandwidth, because there is no metering performed on either the VFA
or a switch side.
In Switch Independent Mode mode, when storage protocols are enabled on the Emulex 10GbE
Virtual Fabric Adapters, six vNICs (three per physical port) are Ethernet, and two vNICs (one per
physical port) are either iSCSI or FCoE.
Unified Fabric Port (UFP)
Unified Fabric Port provides a feature rich solution compared to the original vNIC Virtual Fabric
mode. Supported with RackSwitch™ G8272, G8264CS, and G8264 top-of-rack switches. Like
Virtual Fabric mode vNIC, UFP allows carving up a single 10 Gb port into four virtual NICs (called
vPorts in UFP). UFP also has a number of modes associated with it, including:
Only one vPort (vPort 2) per physical port can be bound to FCoE. If FCoE is not desired, vPort 2 can
be configured for one of the other modes.
Tunnel mode: Provides Q-in-Q mode, where the vPort is customer VLAN-independent (very
similar to vNIC Virtual Fabric Dedicated Uplink Mode).
Trunk mode: Provides a traditional 802.1Q trunk mode (multi-VLAN trunk link) to the virtual
NIC (vPort) interface. In other words, host-side tagging.
Access mode: Provides a traditional access mode (single untagged VLAN) to the virtual NIC
(vPort) interface which is similar to a physical port in access mode.
FCoE mode: Provides FCoE functionality to the vPort.
Auto-VLAN mode: Auto VLAN creation for Qbg and VMready environments.
pNIC mode (physical NIC mode)
In pNIC mode,
the adapter operates as a standard dual-port 10 Gbps Ethernet adapter, and it
functions with any 10 GbE switch. In pNIC mode, with the Emulex FCoE/iSCSI License, the card
operates in a traditional Converged Network Adapter (CNA) mode with two Ethernet ports and two
storage ports (iSCSI or FCoE) available to the operating system.
The following table compares the three virtual fabric modes.
Table 6. Comparison of virtual fabric modes
Function
Virtual Fabric Mode
(vNIC1)
Switch Independent Mode
(vNIC2)
UFP Mode
Description
Intelligence in the Networking
OS working with select
Emulex adapters. VLAN
based.
Intelligence in the adapter,
independent of the upstream
networking device.
Intelligence in the adapter,
independent of the
upstream networking
device.
Supported
switches
G8124E, G8264, G8264T,
G8264CS
All 10 GbE switches
G8272, G8264CS, and
G8264 (NOS 7.9 or later)
Number of
vNICs per
physical 10
Gb port
4 (3 if storage functions are
used to provide a vHBA)
4 (3 if storage)
4 (3 if storage)
Minimum
vNIC
bandwidth
100 Mb
100 Mb
100 Mb
Server-to-
switch
bandwidth
limit per vNIC
Yes
No
Yes, maximum burst
allowed and minimum
guarantee
Emulex VFA5.2 Adapter Family for System x
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