Dell Brocade Adapters - Manual (Page 58)

30 Brocade Adapters Installation and Reference Manual
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Adapter features
1
Before enabling trunking, consider the following requirements:
- When trunking is enabled, a trunked logical port (Port 0) is created and reported per HBA
or Fabric Adapter port configured in HBA mode. Most BCU commands are applicable in
this logical port's context only.
- When configuring Fabric Zones and LUN Masking for Storage, use the PWWN for adapter
port 0.
- Both adapter ports should be connected to the same port group on the switch.
- Only two ports on the same adapter can participate in trunking and both of these should
be operating at the same speed.
- N_Port Trunking is supported on dual port HBA and Fabric Adapter models only.
- To enable or disable trunking on the adapter, you must perform configuration tasks on
both the switch using Fabric OS commands, as well as the adapter using BCU commands
and HCM. Refer to the Brocade Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide and Brocade Adapters
Administrator’s Guide for details.
• Server Application Optimization (SAO). When used with Brocade storage fabrics with enabled
SAO licensing, Brocade HBAs and Fabric Adapter ports configured in HBA mode can use
advanced Adaptive Networking features, such as QoS, designed to ensure Service Level
Agreements (SLAs) in dynamic or unpredictable enterprise-class virtual server environments
with mixed-SLA workloads.
• End-to-end link beaconing between an HBA port or Fabric Adapter port configured in HBA mode
and switch port to which it connects. (Requires Brocade Fabric OS 6.3x or above.)
• Boot over SAN. This feature provides the ability to boot the host operating system from a boot
device located somewhere on the SAN instead of the host’s local disk or direct-attached Fibre
Channel storage. Specifically, this “boot device” is a logical unit number (LUN) located on a
storage device. Booting from direct-attached Fibre Channel storage is also supported.
• Fabric-based boot LUN discovery, a feature that allows the host to obtain boot LUN information
from the fabric zone database.
NOTE
This feature is not available for direct-attached targets.
• Support for Hyper-V. Hyper-V consolidates multiple server roles as separate virtual machines
(VMs) using the Windows Server 2008 operating system and provides integrated management
tools to manage both physical and virtual resources.
• Support for Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE), a minimal operating system with
limited services for Windows Server or Windows Vista used for unattended deployment of
workstations and servers. WinPE is designed for use as a standalone preinstallation
environment and as a component of other setup and recovery technologies. WinPE is
supported by Brocade Windows 2008 adapter drivers.
• Support for Windows Server Core, a minimal server option for Windows Server 2008 operating
systems that provides a low-maintenance server environment with limited functionality. All
configuration and maintenance is done through command line interface windows or by
connecting to a system remotely through a management application. Windows Server Core is
supported by Windows Server 2008 adapter drivers.
• Support for MSI-X, an extended version of Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI), defined in the
PCI 3.0 specification. MSI-X helps improve overall system performance by contributing to lower
interrupt latency and improved utilization of the host CPU. MSI-X is supported by Linux RHEL 5,
RHEL 6, SLES 10, SLES 11, Windows 2008, and ESX Server 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0.