Managing i/o fabric, Fabric management overview, 13 managing i/o fabric – Dell POWEREDGE M1000E User Manual

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Managing I/O Fabric

The chassis can have up to six I/O modules (IOMs), where each IOM is a pass-through or switch module. The IOMs are
classified into three groups—A, B, and C. Each group has two slots—Slot 1 and Slot 2.
The slots are designated with letters, from left to right, across the back of the chassis: A1 | B1 | C1 | C2 | B2 | A2. Each
server has slots for two mezzanine cards (MCs) to connect to the IOMs. The MC and the corresponding IOM must have
the same fabric.
Chassis IO is segregated into three discrete data paths: A, B and C. These paths are described as FABRICS and support
Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or InfiniBand. These discrete fabric paths are split into two IO Banks, bank one and bank two.
Each server IO adapter (Mezzanine Card or LOM) can have either two or four ports depending on the capability. These
ports are divided evenly to IOM banks one and two to allow for redundancy. When you deploy the Ethernet, iSCSI, or
FibreChannel networks, span their redundant links across banks one and two for maximum availability. The discrete IOM
is identified with the fabric identifier and the bank number.
Example: A1 denotes Fabric A in bank 1. C2 denotes Fabric Cin bank 2.
The chassis supports three fabric or protocol types. The IOMs and Mezzanine Cards in a group must have the same or
compatible fabric types.

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Group A IOMS are always connected to the servers' on-board Ethernet adapters; the fabric type of Group A is

always Ethernet.

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For Group B, the IOM slots are permanently connected to the first MC slot in each server module.

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For Group C, the IOM slots are permanently connected to the second MC in each server module.

NOTE: In the CMC CLI, IOMs are referred to by the convention, switch-n: A1=switch-1, A2=switch-2, B1=switch-3,

B2=switch-4, C1=switch-5, and C2= switch-6.