Hardware Owner's Manual

52 About Your System
I/O Connectivity
The M1000e enclosure supports three layers of I/O fabric, selectable between
combinations of Ethernet, fibre-channel, and Infiniband modules. You can
install up to six hot-swappable I/O modules in the enclosure, including fibre-
channel switches, fibre-channel pass-throughs, Infiniband switches, Ethernet
switches, and Ethernet pass-through modules
.
Guidelines for Installing I/O Modules
You must follow these guidelines when populating I/O modules. See
Figure 1-15 for the I/O bay locations.
General I/O Module Configuration Guidelines
• If an I/O module is installed in Fabric B or Fabric C, at least one blade
must have a matching mezzanine card installed to support data flow for
that I/O module.
• If a blade has an optional mezzanine card installed in a Fabric B or Fabric
C card slot, at least one corresponding I/O module must be installed to
support data flow for that fabric.
• Modules may be installed in Fabrics B and C independently (you do not
need to install modules in Fabric B before installing modules in the Fabric
C slots.)
• Slots A1 and A2 only support Ethernet I/O modules. This fabric type is
hard-set to Ethernet for these slots and cannot support Fibre Channel,
Infiniband, or other fabric type modules.
• Fabrics A, B, and C can support Ethernet fabric-type modules.
• To enable switch configuration prior to blade imaging, I/O modules are
allowed to power-up before a blade is inserted in the enclosure.
Fabric A
Fabric A is a redundant Gb Ethernet fabric, supporting I/O module slots A1
and A2. The integrated Ethernet controllers in each blade dictate Fabric A as
an Ethernet-only fabric.
NOTE: Fabric A supports KR (10 Gbps standard) if the midplane version in the
enclosure is 1.1 or later. To identify the midplane version, see "Identifying Midplane
Version" on page 38.