BladeSystem - General
1748234 Members
3334 Online
108759 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

We have a c7000 blade system.
We are sending packets on 5Mpps from external server (with ixgbe card) through UPlink X2 to a server blade with BroadCom 10G LOM through internal port d15.
We saw the received amount of 1.8Mpps!! then we monitored the UPlink X2 and d15 internal port.
The IN traffic to X2 was 5Mpps but the OUT traffic of d15 port was 1.8 Mpps!!!
It seems that flex-10 itself drops the packets!!!
Is it possible???
17 REPLIES 17
Frank Gessner
Frequent Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

Hi Nima,

whats the speed of the assigned network in the pofile of the blade where you are sending the packets? >= 5MB ?
Which Version of bnx2x-driver are you using.
>= 1.52-14 ?
Which OS?

regards, Frank
rick jones
Honored Contributor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

What was the CPU uiltization of each core in the blade? It is entirely possible that you were saturating one of the cores taking interrupts from the NC532i. Particularly if stream of packets was considered a single "flow" by the NIC (ie if they are all to/from the same IP address) and so were not spread-out across cores.
there is no rest for the wicked yet the virtuous have no pillows
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

Is it possible for Flex-10 to negotiate with the NIC Cards and perform kind of an overflow control? Is there any way to disable this overflow mechanism for VC Flex-10?
rick jones
Honored Contributor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

10GbE standards offer the prospect of flow-control via things called pause frames. I believe it is possible for a LOM to send pause frames to the Flex-10.

While you are checking the per-core CPU utilization on the blade, you can also look at the ethtool -S statistics and see if any of them talk about sending pause frames.
there is no rest for the wicked yet the virtuous have no pillows
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

This is the point: It seems that the Flow Control is already enabled and we want to disable it!
I clarified my purpose here:
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1447807

Anyway, it would be great if there could be anyway to turn off the flow control of either the FlexNIC or Flex-10 VC.
HEM_2
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

you can turn off flow control globally in VC after firmware 2.30 or later.

To turn it off log in to the CLI and issue the following command:

set advanced-networking FlowControl=off

*** IMPORTANT - you need to do this in a scheduled downtime or be aware that when you make this setting the VC downlink ports will be temporarily disconnected to affect the change.
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

Thank you very much!
And a point! what is PacketBufferOverallocationRatio Parameter?
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

I even changed the over allocation parameter but there is no change!
Nima Gh.
Regular Advisor

Re: Flex-10 VC Drops Packets @ 5 Mega Packet Per Second

A point! it seems that the 2mpps is the maximum packet rate of the bnx2x!

Are embedded NICs of Proliant G6 Blade Servers assumed as ports of a single dual-port ethernet card or two different single-port cards?