Supported Operating Systems For Nic Partitioning; Configuring For Nic Partitioning - Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters User Manual

NIC Partitioning: Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapter User Guide
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NIC Partitioning: Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapter User
Guide
Overview

Configuring for NIC Partitioning

Overview
NIC partitioning (NPAR) divides a Broadcom NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC into multiple virtual NICs by having
multiple PCI physical functions per port. Each PCI function is associated with a different virtual NIC. To the OS and the
network, each physical function appears as a separate NIC port.
NOTE: Link speed cannot be configured for 1 Gbps when NPAR is enabled.
The number of partitions for each port is from one to four; thus, making a dual-port NIC capable of a maximum of eight
partitions. Each partition behaves as if it is an independent NIC port.
NOTE: On quad-port adapters with two 1G ports and two 10G ports, the 1G ports do not support NPAR.
Benefits of a partitioned 10G NIC include:
Reduced cabling and ports when used to replace many 1G NICs.
Server segmentation with separate subnets/VLANs.
High server availability with NIC failover and NIC link bandwidth aggregation.
Server I/O virtualization with a virtual OS and monolithic OS support.
Changes to the OS is not required.
SLB type teaming is supported.

Supported Operating Systems for NIC Partitioning

The Broadcom NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters support NIC partitioning on the following operating systems:
Windows Server 2008 family
Linux (Red Hat 5.5 and later, SLES 11 SP1 and later)
VMware ESX, ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.0
Configuring for NIC Partitioning
NIC partitioning can be configured using Broadcom's Comprehensive Configuration Management (CCM) utility.
To configure a NIC for partitioning using the CCM utility
1. Select the NIC from Device List.
2. From the Main Menu, select Device Hardware Configuration.
3. Change the Multi-Function Mode to NPAR.
4. Configure the NIC parameters for your configuration based on the options shown in
lists the configuration parameters available from the NIC Partitioning Configuration screen.
Table 1
Table 1: Configuration Options
Parameter
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Description
Table 1.
Options
Auto