Q-Logic 8200, 3200 manual Using NPAR under ESX

2–Configuring NIC NIC Partition (NPAR)

After you have configured NPAR mode, you can modify the minimum and maximum bandwidth per NPAR. The changes take effect immediately; no reboot is required. The minimum and maximum bandwidths are specified as percentages of the link bandwidth, where:

Minimum bandwidth is the minimum guaranteed bandwidth to a partition.

Maximum bandwidth is the maximum value that a partition is permitted to use.

NPAR mode supports iSCSI boot, FCoE boot, and PXE boot in their respective partitions.

NOTE:

For additional information on configuring NPAR in the QConvergeConsole utility, refer to the QConvergeConsole Help System.

Using NPAR under ESX

VMware vSphere provides a CIM monitoring framework for both classic ESX and ESXi. Use this framework to configure and manage Ethernet interfaces. On an ESX Server, you can configure and manage Ethernet interfaces using a command line interface. On an ESXi Server, use the remote command line interfaces (remote CLIs).

All NPAR Ethernet functions are enumerated by the hypervisor, controlled by the driver running in the hypervisor, and configured similar to other Ethernet interfaces. For more details, see NIC Partition (NPAR).

You would typically create a virtual switch (vSwitch) for each NPAR interface. You can configure virtual machines (VMs) to use the standard virtual network devices, such as VMXNET 3 adapters. On each interface, you can configure features such as NetQueue. Although it is possible to configure all standard aggregation and failover configurations supported by ESX using NPAR interfaces as uplinks, it is not useful to have multiple uplinks with NPARs belonging to the same physical port.

The vSwitch switches the packets when VMs are assigned to share the same NPAR. The embedded switch (eSwitch) on the adapter switches packets when packets are sent by a VM on an NPAR destined to another VM that is connected to a vSwitch on a different NPAR belonging to the same physical port. If the two NPARs are associated with different physical ports, the external switch forwards packets between them.

Perform vSwitch configuration using either standard service console commands or RCLI commands. For specific command options, refer to the VMware documentation.

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