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Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

 
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WDSGlobal Group MIS
Occasional Advisor

c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

Hi all,

We have a single c7000 enclosure with about 12 BL460c half-height blades installed. We use a mixture of QLogic QMH2462 4Gb FC HBA's and NC325m Quad Port 1Gb NIC mezzanine cards.

Any BL460c with FC connectivity has the HBA installed in the Mezz-2 slot, and we have FC Pass-Thru modules in Bays 5 & 6.

Any BL460c with a Quad NIC card has it installed in the Mezz-1 slot, and we have 1Gb Ethernet Pass-Thru modules in Bays 1, 2, 3 & 4.

The problem with this configuration is that we can only use two of the four NIC ports on the Quad cards because of the limitation of the Mezz-1 slot. I've seen this limitation in documentation and it is borne out in the view of available NIC's on the operating systems.

What I would like to do is swap the FC HBA's to the Mezz-1 slot, and put the Quad NIC's in the Mezz-2 slot, then move the FC Pass-thru modules to Bays 3 & 4, and populate all the remaining bays with Ethernet modules (either Pass-thru or switch). My question is, is this a supported configuration, and will this allow me to use both FC ports and all 4 NIC's?

Looking at all the port mapping documentation I can find I don't see a problem with this proposed configuration, but I am concerned about matching card "classes" and PCIe lanes (x4, x8 etc.) to the mezz cards.

Any advice would be gratefully received, especially real-world working examples.
Many thanks,
Clive Lawrence
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JKytsi
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

Hi,

It works, 4Gb FC works just fine in x4 mezz slot. And I think that current FC cards are type I
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HEM_2
Honored Contributor

Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

Clive:

yes, you can have dual-port HBA in Mezz 1 that routes to Bay 3 and 4 (most common config I see) and then have quad-port NC325m in Mezz 2.

***Important Note***

a quad port NIC card installed in Mezz slot 2 (or 3 for that matter) routes to bays 5-8. You will have a single port going to slot 5, 6, 7, and 8.

In other words, you will need 2 additional ethernet modules for Bay 7 and 8 so that all 4 NIC ports from your quad mezz card will have a connection.
Raghuarch
Honored Contributor

Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

A quad port NIC card installed in Mezz slot 2 maps to bays 5,6,7,and 8.
Please refer to the attachment for the detailed port mapping.
WDSGlobal Group MIS
Occasional Advisor

Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

Thanks for all the replies and advice. I think we will now plan to move everything around, and get a couple more switches or pass-thru modules for the remaining empty bays so that we can use the full complement of NIC's in the Blades, taking us up to 6 NIC's in each one. Could be some late nights ahead...
WDSGlobal Group MIS
Occasional Advisor

Re: c7000 port mapping w/ FC HBA and quad-NIC mezz cards

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