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2 Virtual-IO Manager - Introduction
This chapter provides a general introduction to the concept of the
2.1Virtual addresses
Physical MAC addresses and WWN addresses are stored on the network card or in the host bus adapter (HBA) of a server blade or PRIMERGY rack server. If a server blade or PRIMERGY rack server has to be exchanged or the operating system and/or the application has to be started on another server, usually the LAN or SAN network has to be reconfigured. This means that whilst the MAC address and the WWN addresses identify a physical server blade, several administrators have to be involved.
To separate the administration areas from each other, it is necessary to keep the I/O parameters (MAC and WWN) outwardly constant.
Using virtual addresses instead of the MAC addresses or WWN addresses stored on the NIC (network interface card) or in the HBA, the addressing remains constant even when a server blade is exchanged at the slot or a PRIMERGY rack server is replaced by another one.
2.2Special connection blade for blade server
Up to now, blade servers have been used essentially to connect the LAN (Local Area Network) and Fibre Channel ports (FC ports) of individual server blades to the LAN and SAN networks (SAN - Storage Area Network) using switch blades or
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