BladeSystem - General
1748227 Members
4445 Online
108759 Solutions
New Discussion

Question about BL460G6 NC532i Flex-10 10GbE Nic and Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb Ethernet Module compatibility to Citrix XEN

 
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

Question about BL460G6 NC532i Flex-10 10GbE Nic and Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb Ethernet Module compatibility to Citrix XEN

Jun was looking for info on VC Flex-10 and Citrix XenServer compatibility:

 

***********************************************************************

Any comments for the following questions?

1)Is FlexNIC able to be supported in XenServer environment?

2) If the 1st question is ok, is DCC function able to be supported by the latest XenServer? According to our statement, it is required that OS drive should support DCC, like in Windows or VMware environment. How about Linux and Xenserver?

*************************************************************************************

We had a lot of people express themselves to help Jun:

***********************************************************************************

Vincent:

For XenServer 5.5 check out http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124995

I would ass-u-me that driver has made it to XenServer 5.6 as well but I haven’t had a chance to check

Then Albert:

That fix is included in XS 5.6, please note however that the fix for XS5.5 is NOT available for the HP XenServer!!!

So when running the HP XenServer you’re bound to run on a lower version of the firmware that doesn’t support the features like DCC.

 

Hope this helps, regards,

Next was Guo with more questions:

What’s the meaning of HP XenServer, you mean our OEM edition not Citrix branded edition? And if I do not use the DCC function, can I use VC-Flex 10 Module cut one 10Gb Nic into 4 nics?

Another question is how about our OEM Xen Desktop solution, such as Citrix XenDesktop 4 Enterprise edition(TC283A), does VC-flex 10 also support this? Per my understanding, if XS5.5 is ok, XenDesktop4.0 is ok too, am I right?

Sorry for so many question, and deep thanks!

Vincent was still engaged:

Yes, HP XenServer is our OEM edition that we have stopped providing with XenServer 5.6.

Yes you can use FlexNICs (4 per 10Gb port) without DCC, but then any change you make in the VC configuration about the FlexNIC bandwidth or connection status requires powering off the server. In general you want to be DCC all the way (NIC driver AND firmware) or not at all. If you mix a DCC-capable NIC firmware with a non-DCC NIC driver, you will run into problems.

XenDesktop installs on top of Windows, as such it wouldn’t care about NIC hardware

And Kirk from the Virtualization team responded:

More correctly , XenDesktop runs in Windows on top of a hypervisor and does not care about the hardware.  If the hardware is supported by the hypervisor then XenDesktop will work.  The lasted XenDesktop OEM addition is based on the Citrix retail XenServer 5.6 and not the HP OEM version of XenServer.

*****************************************************************************

 

All great info! Any comments or other input? Does this help in your Citrix environments? Let us know.