Datasheet

Broadcom 2-port 10Gb Virtual Fabric Adapter for IBM BladeCente

Modes of operation

The Broadcom 2-port 10 Gb Virtual Fabric Adapter supports two modes, Switch Independent Virtual NIC

(vNIC) Mode and the regular physical NIC (pNIC) mode:

Switch Independent vNIC Mode: In vNIC mode, each physical port appears to the blade server as

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four virtual NICs. The default bandwidth for each vNIC is 2.5 Gbps. Bandwidth for each vNIC can be

configured from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps.

The total bandwidth of the four vNICs per port cannot exceed 10 Gbps, however, the Broadcom

adapter supports oversubscription, whereby the aggregate bandwidth can be as high as 40 Gbps

(4x10 Gbps) allowing any of the vNICs to consume as much as 10 Gbps where there is no contention

or less when there is (based on the weight assigned to that vNIC). vNICs can also be configured to

have 0 bandwidth if you must allocate the available bandwidth to fewer than eight vNICs.

The adapter works with the following switches:

BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module

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Cisco Nexus 4001I Switch Module

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10Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru Module and a top-of-rack (TOR) switch.

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These switches are installed in I/O module bays 7 and 9 in the chassis. Switch Independent Mode

extends the existing customer VLANs to the virtual NIC interfaces. The IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tag is

essential to the separation of the vNIC groups by the NIC adapter or driver and the switch. The VLAN

tags are added to the packet by the applications or drivers at each end station rather than by the

switch.

Note: The Broadcom 2-port 10 Gb Virtual Fabric Adapter does not support IBM Virtual Fabric Mode.

Physical NIC (pNIC) mode: In pNIC mode, the expansion card can operate as a standard 10 Gbps or

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1 Gbps 2-port Ethernet expansion card. When in pNIC mode, the expansion card functions with any

available 10 Gb switch or 10 Gb pass-thru module installed in I/O module bays 7 and 9.

Operating environment

The expansion card is supported in the following environments:

Temperature: 10 to 35 °C (50 to 95 °F)

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Relative humidity: 8 to 80% (non-condensing)

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Maximum altitude: 2,133 m ( 7,000 ft)

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Supported servers

The Broadcom 2-port 10Gb Virtual Fabric Adapter is supported in the IBM BladeCenter servers listed in

Table 2.

Table 2. Supported servers

Expansion card

Broadcom 2-port 10Gb

Virtual Fabric Adapter

N N N Y Y Y N N N N N N N N N N