User guide

User Guide NetXtreme II
September 2013
Broadcom Corporation
Document INGSRVT78-CDUM100-R Fibre Channel Over Ethernet: Broadcom NetXtreme II
®
Network Adapter User Guide Page 197
Fibre Channel Over Ethernet: Broadcom
NetXtreme II
®
Network Adapter User Guide
•Overview
• FCoE Boot from SAN
• Configuring FCoE
OVERVIEW
In today’s data center, multiple networks, including network attached storage (NAS), management, IPC, and storage, are
used to achieve the desired performance and versatility. In addition to iSCSI for storage solutions, Fibre Channel over
Ethernet (FCoE) can now be used with capable Broadcom C-NICs. FCoE is a standard that allows Fibre Channel protocol
to be transferred over Ethernet by preserving existing Fibre Channel infrastructures and capital investments by classifying
received FCoE and FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) frames.
The following FCoE features are supported:
• Receiver classification of FCoE and FIP frames. FIP is the FCoE Initialization Protocol used to establish and maintain
connections.
• Receiver CRC offload
• Transmitter CRC offload
• Dedicated queue set for Fibre Channel traffic
• Data Center Bridging (DCB) provides lossless behavior with Priority Flow Control (PFC)
• DCB allocates a share of link bandwidth to FCoE traffic with Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS)
DCB supports storage, management, computing, and communications fabrics onto a single physical fabric that is simpler to
deploy, upgrade, and maintain than in standard Ethernet networks. DCB technology allows the capable Broadcom C-NICs
to provide lossless data delivery, lower latency, and standards-based bandwidth sharing of data center physical links. The
DCB supports FCoE, iSCSI, Network-Attached Storage (NAS), Management, and IPC traffic flows. For more information on
DCB, see Using Data Center Bridging (DCB).