Users Guide
recover from frame loss. To successfully transport storage trac, data center Ethernet must provide no-
drop service with lossless links.
InterProcess
Communication
(IPC) trac
InterProcess Communication (IPC) trac within high-performance computing clusters to share information.
Server trac is extremely sensitive to latency requirements.
To ensure lossless delivery and latency-sensitive scheduling of storage and service trac and I/O convergence of LAN, storage, and
server trac over a unied fabric, IEEE data center bridging adds the following extensions to a classical Ethernet network:
• 802.1Qbb — Priority-based Flow Control (PFC)
• 802.1Qaz — Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS)
• 802.1Qau — Congestion Notication
• Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBx) protocol
NOTE: Dell Networking OS supports only the PFC, ETS, and DCBx features in data center bridging.
Priority-Based Flow Control
In a data center network, priority-based ow control (PFC) manages large bursts of one trac type in multiprotocol links so that it
does not aect other trac types and no frames are lost due to congestion.
When PFC detects congestion on a queue for a specied priority, it sends a pause frame for the 802.1p priority trac to the
transmitting device. In this way, PFC ensures that PFC-enabled priority trac is not dropped by the switch.
PFC enhances the existing 802.3x pause and 802.1p priority capabilities to enable ow control based on 802.1p priorities (classes of
service). Instead of stopping all trac on a link (as performed by the traditional Ethernet pause mechanism), PFC pauses trac on a
link according to the 802.1p priority set on a trac type. You can create lossless ows for storage and server trac while allowing for
loss in case of LAN trac congestion on the same physical interface.
The following illustration shows how PFC handles trac congestion by pausing the transmission of incoming trac with dot1p
priority 4.
The system supports loading two DCB_Cong les:
• FCoE converged trac with priority 3.
• iSCSI storage trac with priority 4.
In the Dell Networking OS, PFC is implemented as follows:
• PFC supports buering to receive data that continues to arrive on an interface while the remote system reacts to the PFC
operation.
• PFC uses DCB MIB IEEE 802.1azd2.5 and PFC MIB IEEE 802.1bb-d2.2.
Data Center Bridging (DCB)
243










