Blade Support of FCoE

[Tony Lizzerri]

We have a Nexus 5000 at the ToR. We want to start migrating to a blade server environment for our new cloud infrastructure.

How does HP move FCoE traffic from a server CNA to the ToR? I need a definitive answer.

Thank you.

[David Claypool]

Interoperability standards for multi-hop FCoE are still in process in the standards committees. The CNA on a G7 ProLiant blade server transports FCoE one-hop to the Virtual Connect FlexFabric interconnect. From there you configure specific uplinks to your Fibre Channel fabric.

[Tony Lizzerri]

David, I need a straight-forward answer.

What you are saying then is that the only way HP has to move FCoE traffic from a CNA to the Top of rack is via a 10G pass-through module, correct?

As for multihop FCoE, it is still developing, but the bulk of the work has been long completed. Cisco offers the Nexus 4000 blade for the IBM blade chassis. It does FIP snooping and is in compliance with INCITS T11 BB5. The Nexus also supports VE port instantiation for multihop FCoE across the data center.