vNIC virtual mode

(IBM Flex System devices only) The following topic provides information about the vNIC virtual mode.

About this task

In vNIC virtual mode the IBM Flex System CN4022 2-Port Adapter shows the virtual characteristics of the adapter. The adapter supports four virtual ports. Each port can be configured for personalities of Ethernet, iSCSI offload, and FCoE offload. Because the adapter has two physical ports, you can have a maximum of eight Ethernet ports and four storage offload personalities. These are all virtual. The default is for eight Ethernet ports to be enabled and all storage offloads to be disabled. Each of these are enabled or disabled for each virtual port through the uEFI utility.

Procedure

To configure the IBM Flex System CN4022 2-Port Adapter for vNIC virtual mode, complete the following steps:

  1. From the uEFI utility, select System Settings > Network and select the port.
  2. To set all ports to Ethernet, and configure eight virtual Ethernet ports, complete the following steps:
    1. Access the NIC Partition Configuration Page from the Main Configuration Page.
      Each physical port has four PCI functions (PFs) which are set to Ethernet mode (ETH). The PCI function index represents the index of the virtual port of the adapter. The physical port 1 has the even index values: 0, 2, 4, and 6 (zero indexed). The physical port 2 has odd index values: 1, 3, 5, and 7.
      Notes:
      • All modes can be disabled.
      • Only one Fibre Channel mode can be enabled per physical PHY port.
      • You can enable one or two iSCSI modes per physical port.
      • One FCoE mode and one iSCSI mode can be enabled per physical port.
    2. Select PF#0 to view the details of the virtual port.

      Note that the Ethernet mode is enabled and both FC and iSCSI are disabled. The MAC address is set to the factory defaults.

    3. Use the information in Profiles to apply an IFM pattern to the IBM Flex System CN4022 2-Port Adapter.
  3. To set all ports to Ethernet and configure eight virtual Ethernet ports and one Fibre Channel port, complete the following steps:
    1. Access the NIC Partition Configuration Page from the Main Configuration Page to configure the adapter.

      Note that each physical port has four PCI functions (PFs) which are set to Ethernet mode (ETH), except the PF#1 for the physical port 2.

    2. Select PF#1 to view the details of the virtual port.

      Note that the Ethernet mode and FC mode are enabled and iSCSI is disabled. The MAC address and WWN are set to the factory defaults.

    3. Use the information in Profiles to apply an IFM pattern to the IBM Flex System CN4022 2-Port Adapter.
  4. You can enable DCB Protocol from the Device Hardware Configuration page to setup an exception to the configuration. If Ethernet is disabled for functions 0 or 1, the interface will still consume the MAC address. This is whether or not FCoE or iSCSI is enabled on the interface.

What to do next

Optionally, you can verify the configuration of the adapter through the uEFI utility, IFM, and the CMM CLI mode.

  1. Verify that the adapter uses the new addresses from the IFM configuration. Note that the compute node has a new virtual MAC address.

    If you configured one virtual port for Fibre Channel, the WWN value will consume, too. The new addresses that the compute node will have are the addresses from Virtual MAC Addresses and the addresses from Virtual World Wide Node.

    To verify Fibre Channel consumption through IFM, see Hardware devices.

  2. You can verify that IFM reflects the address consumption. Note that the adapter is inserted in Mezz 2, and has eight virtual ports. All ports have Normal status, which means the ports consumed the new addresses. If you configured one virtual port for Fibre Channel, virtual port 2 has both Ethernet mode and FC mode, which has a user-defined value.
  3. You can verify the address consumption in CMM through the CLI mode.

    If you configured one virtual port for Fibre Channel, you can verify the WWN address consumption in CMM through the CLI mode.