Dell Brocade Adapters - Manual (Page 51)

Brocade Adapters Installation and Reference Manual 23
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Adapter features
1
• Ethernet flow control
Ethernet flow control is a mechanism for managing data transmission between two network
nodes to prevent a fast sender from over running a slow receiver. When an overwhelmed
receiver generates a PAUSE frame, this halts transmission for a specified period of time. Traffic
resumes when time specified in the frame expires or PAUSE zero is received.
• Flexible MAC address
• Hypervisor
Hypervisor is a processor-specific virtualization platform that allows multiple operating
systems to share a single server platform. Refer to
“Hypervisor support” on page xvii for a list
of operating systems that support hypervisor operation for Brocade adapters:
• Brocade Network Intermediate Driver (BNI)
This provides support for multiple VLANs on ports and teams on Windows systems. This driver
is installed with the adapter software.
• Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) over DCB.
This feature leverages pre-priority-based flow control (PFC) and enhanced transmission
selection (ETS) features provided by Data Center Bridging (DCB) to Ethernet to enable more
lossless delivery of iSCSI traffic in data center environments. This feature enables fabric-wide
configuration of the iSCSI traffic. This is achieved by configuring the iSCSI traffic parameters on
the switches, which distribute those parameters to directly-attached, DCB-capable iSCSI
servers and targets. The adapter firmware obtains the iSCSI configuration from the switch
through the DCB Exchange Protocol (DCBX) and applies the configuration to the network driver
to classify the iSCSI traffic. The adapter will use this as a priority for all network traffic.
Note the following for the different adapter models:
- On CNA adapters and Fabric Adapter port configured in CNA mode, ETS support will only
be supported either between network and FCoE priority or one network and iSCSI priority.
- On Fabric Adapters, a separate transmit queue will be available for iSCSI traffic. This will
allow iSCSI traffic to be sent on separate queue and priority and not compete with network
traffic.
This feature is not supported on Solaris systems.
• Link aggregation (NIC teaming)
A network interface “team” is a collection of physical Ethernet interfaces (CNA ports and Fabric
Adapter port configured in CNA or NIC mode) acting as a single interface. Teaming overcomes
problems with bandwidth limitation and redundancy often associated with Ethernet
connections. Combining (aggregating) ports can increase the link speed beyond the limits of
one port and provide redundancy. You can team up to eight ports across multiple CNAs (and
Fabric Adapter ports configured in CNA or NIC mode) in three modes: failover, failback, or
802.3ad using BCU commands and HCM dialog boxes.
- Failover mode provides fault tolerance. Only one port in a team is active at a time (primary
port), and the others are in standby mode. If the primary port goes down, a secondary port
is chosen using a round-robin algorithm as the next primary. This port continues to be
primary, even if the original primary port returns.