Dell Brocade Adapters User Manual
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Brocade Adapters Installation and Reference Manual
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Adapter features
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Team Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) support
VMQ support is provided by the Brocade Network Intermediate (BNI) driver for teaming (with no
VLANs). VMQ support allows classification of packets that the adapter receives using the
destination MAC address, and then routing the packets to different receive queues. Packets
can be directly transferred to a virtual machine’s shared memory using direct memory access
(DMA). This allows scaling to multiple processors by processing packets for different virtual
machines in on different processors. VMQ support provides the following features:
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Improves network throughput by distributing processing of network traffic for multiple
virtual machines (VMs) among multiple processors.
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Reduces CPU utilization by offloading receive packet filtering to NIC hardware.
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Avoids network data copy by using DMA to transfer data directly to VM memory.
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Splits network data to provide a secure environment.
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Supports live migration
VMQ support is only available on systems running Windows Server 2008 R2. Virtual machines
must be running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows SErver 2008, or Windows
Vista with Integration Services Setup Disk installed.
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TCP segmentation offload (TSO) and large send offload (LSO)
Large chunks of data must be segmented to smaller segments to pass through network
elements. LSO increases outbound throughput by reducing CPU overhead. Offloading to the
network card, where segmentation can be done by the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), is
called TCP segmentation.
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VLAN (802.1Q)
A Virtual LAN (VLAN) is a way to provide segmentation of an Ethernet network. A VLAN is a
group of hosts with a common set of requirements that communicate as if they were attached
to the same LAN segment, regardless of their physical location. A VLAN has the same
attributes as a physical LAN, but it allows end stations to be logically grouped together.
VLANS are implemented by Brocade in the intermediate drivers for Windows 2008 x86_64, as
well as Windows 2003 x86_64. VLANs are supported on Linux, Solaris, and VMware as
implemented by the specific operating system.
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MAC and VLAN filtering and tagging
A mechanism that allows multiple networks to transparently share the same physical network
link without leakage of information between networks. Adapter hardware filters data frames
from devices on a LAN so that only frames that match the MAC and VLAN for the configured
LAN are forwarded to that LAN.
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VLANs over teams. Specific VLANs can be configured to communicate over specific teams
using BCU commands and HCM. The function of the VLAN over a team is the same as a VLAN
on a single port. A team can support up to 64 VLANs, and the VLANs should have the same
MAC address as the team. Changing a team’s MAC address changes the address of VLANs
over the team. Changing the team name adds the name to the prefix of the VLAN’s display
name.
VLANs over teams is supported by the Brocade intermediate drivers for Windows 2008 x86_64
and R2 and later systems only. For more details on teaming, refer to
in this section. For more information on VLANs, refer to
in this section.