topic Re: FlexFabric Server Profile FlexHBA in BladeSystem - General

FlexFabric Server Profile FlexHBA

asheth — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:06:29 GMT

Hello All,

We are planning on setting up our c7000 enclsoures we recently procured and had a question regarding the FlexHBA that can be assigned to a server profile. We undersatnd that the SAN traffic within a FlexFabric moduel is FCoE that is converted to nomral FC on exiting the module. The question we had was in the FlexFabric cookbook (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02616817/c02616817.pdf) the scenarios all provision a FCoE card to a profile. I though there was also the ability to assigan a FC FLexHBA to the profile so the OS on the blades sees a FC card not a FCoE HBA.

Thanks

Re: FlexFabric Server Profile FlexHBA

HEM_2 — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:47:15 GMT

A FlexFabric Adapter FCoE connection cannot be presented to the blade operating system as a Native FC HBA. It will be presented as an FCoE HBA.

The only way to get a native FC HBA to be presented in the blade operating system is to add a Native FC HBA Mezz card and connect it to a Fibre Channel Interconnect Module.

Re: FlexFabric Server Profile FlexHBA

asheth — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:15:33 GMT

Thanks, we talked to our HP sales engineer. Even though it is a FCoE card the transport layer is still native fiber from the server to the FLex Fabric module. FCoE is how the FlexFabric module transports the traffic within itself.

Re: FlexFabric Server Profile FlexHBA

Casper42 — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:32:07 GMT

Yes and no.

No: Its FCoE leaving the server and Native FC leaving the uplink.

Yes: The Server sees 2 distinct peices of Hardware though, an FC Adapter and a NIC Adapter and the FC Adapter is treated just like any other FC Adapter. Emulex even uses the same Driver stack for traditional FC and FCoE CNAs.

So even though its really FCoE, if you went into Device Manager on Windows for example, you would see 2 FC Cards under Storage and 6 Network cards under Network. Your OS doesn't really need to know about FCoE as long as Emulex/HP provides the aproptiate drivers.