HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port Module uplink ports X1-X4 can be configured as FC fabric ports or Ethernet network ports. If a port is configured as an FC fabric port, the protocol used is FCoE, and the server profile connection to that fabric is an FCoE connection.

Because of the many possible configurations of the FlexFabric module, pluggable modules can differ for each uplink port on the FlexFabric module. If the uplink port is being used for an FC fabric, an SFP-FC connector is required. SFP speeds of 2Gb, 4Gb, or 8Gb are supported for this configuration. A 1G SFP connector is not supported on ports X1-X4 for either Ethernet or FC configurations. For Ethernet ports, the 10GbE SFP-LRM pluggable module is not supported on ports X1-X4. The Ethernet SFP-LR and SFP-SR are supported on all ports.

In a multi-enclosure environment, all enclosures must have the same VC-FC and FlexFabric module configuration. For example, if the local enclosure has VC-FC modules in bays 3 and 4, each remote enclosure must also have VC-FC modules in bays 3 and 4. This is called an FC bay group. Support for FC bay groups with FlexFabric modules is similar to support for existing VC-FC modules. FlexFabric module bay groups cannot contain any other type of VC-FC module, and any other VC-FC bay group cannot contain a FlexFabric module. These module types are incompatible in the same bay group. For more information, see the HP Virtual Connect for c-Class BladeSystem Setup and Installation Guide on the HP website (http://www.hp.com/go/vc/manuals).

When an available port is used for Ethernet, it is no longer available for FC configuration, and vice-versa. Likewise, a port that is removed from a network, shared uplink set, or fabric becomes available for configuration of another network or fabric.

The FlexFabric VC module requirements also imply some additional constraints with current VC-FC requirements for bay groups. When a network is configured on a FlexFabric module using FC-capable ports, those ports across the bay group are configured as Ethernet ports, becoming unavailable for FC. A similar case applies when selecting the port type as FC.

On the NC551i LOM and the NC551m mezzanine card, there is a limitation. FCoE and iSCSI connections are not supported on the same adapter at the same time. By default, if a FlexFabric module is found in the enclosure, FCoE connections are created for each server profile. If you do not want to configure FCoE connections, delete the default connections to allow the ports to be used for other connections, such as iSCSI or additional Ethernet connections. To delete the connections, right-click the connection, and then select Delete Connection.

There are additional limitations with the supported LOMs and mezzanine cards that support FlexFabric configurations. Both FCoE boot and PXE can be configured on the same port with the NC551i LOM and the NC551m mezzanine card on different physical functions. Alternatively, iSCSI and PXE can be configured on the same port. Only one physical function can be configured for FCoE on a port.

When configuring FCoE connections, the port speed can be set to 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb, 8Gb, custom, preferred, or disabled. The port speed is limited to a total of 20Gb, which must be shared between all defined connections for that port. The custom speed allows you to better control the bandwidth between FC and Ethernet connections. Valid custom speeds are between 100Mb and 10Gb, in 100Mb increments. After all connections are defined for a port, the actual allocated bandwidth is calculated by VCM. For bandwidth information, see “Bandwidth Assignment (on page 175)."

PXE settings

Virtual Connect Manager supports three PXE options:

•Enable—VC Manager sends a configuration update to the mezzanine NIC or embedded NIC associated with the port to enable PXE operations.

Virtual Connect server profiles 170