Ethernet Support Guide for HP-UX 11i v3

Flex-10 An HP Virtual Connect technology that lets you replace multiple lower-bandwidth physical NIC
ports with a single Flex-10 port. Each 10GbE adapter port is divided into up to four individual
FlexNICs with bandwidth allocation in 100Mb/s increments to the maximum 10Gb/s per adapter
port. Flex-10 reduces management requirements, the number of NICs and interconnect modules
needed, and power and operational costs.
See also FlexFabric.
FlexFabric Part of the HP FlexNetwork architecture portfolio, FlexFabric is a highly-scalable data center fabric
architecture of an HP Converged Infrastructure. HP FlexFabric creates a common, wired-once,
virtual I/O network that consolidates Ethernet and storage networks onto a single fabric.
Virtual Connect FlexFabric adapters broaden Flex-10 capabilities by providing a way to converge
network and storage protocols on a 10 Gb port. Virtual Connect FlexFabric modules and FlexFabric
adapters can (1) converge Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or accelerated iSCSI traffic into a single 10
Gb data stream, (2) partition a 10 Gb adapter port into four physical functions with adjustable
bandwidth per physical function, and (3) preserve routing information for all data types.
See also Flex-10.
FlexNIC Provided by HP Flex-10 and HP FlexFabric adapters, an abstraction of a portion of a Virtual
Connect 10GbE connection that is presented to the operating system as a standard NIC with its
own driver instance. The 10GbE link is partitioned into several smaller bandwidth FlexNics. Each
FlexNIC has a unique MAC address and supports key benefits of integrated switching, including
port aggregation, failover and VLAN tagging. Use of HP Flex-NICs with Virtual Connect
interconnect modules can reduce the required hardware by consolidating all the NIC connections
onto two 10 Gb ports. It provides virtual machine applications a greater number of network
connections per server without increasing network complexity or reducing server resources.
See also FlexFabric.
full-duplex mode A mode of media utilization whereby data can flow in both directions simultaneously across the
multiple wire pairs of a physical link. While full-duplex operation is not defined per se in the IEEE
802.3u-1995 specification, the specification does define a mechanism for this mode to be
autonegotiated between devices on each end of a link. Full-duplex mode is typically found on
switches.
function A PCIe function. Each function can be configured by HP-UX as a single device: an FCoE device
or a LAN device. HP-UX can configure a dual-ported CNA with as many as 8 PCIe functions (up
to four per port) in a Flex-10 environment. As many as two of these functions can be FCoE devices
(one per port); the remainder are NIC or LAN devices (up to four per port).
Gbit/s Gigabits per second; also referred to as Gb/s.
Gbyte/s Gigabytes per second; also referred to as GB/s.
half-duplex mode The media utilization mode of IEEE 802.3u-1995 networks whereby data can flow in only one
direction at a time across the multiple wire pairs of a physical link.
hardware path An identifier assigned by the system according to the physical location (slot) of the card in the
hardware backplane. On HP servers, the I/O subsystem identifies each La card by its hardware
path.
host name Name of system on the network.
hub A network interconnection device that allows multiple devices to share a single logical link segment.
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. A national association whose activities include
publishing standards applicable to various electronic technologies. The IEEE technical committees
are numbered and grouped by area.
IEEE 802.1 See 802.1.
IEEE 802.1D See 802.1D.
IEEE 802.1p See 802.1p.
IEEE 802.1Q See 802.1Q.
IEEE 802.3 See 802.3.
IEEE 802.3u-1995
network
See 802.3u-1995 network.
70 Glossary