Virtual Connect FlexFabric - optimizing network connections for virtual machines
One of the consequences of translating server applications into a virtual environment is a several-fold increase in the bandwidth requirements of the network interfaces of the server running multiple virtual machines, compared to the traditional “one server - one application” approach.
Installing additional network controllers in the server is not always able to effectively solve this problem — together with each board, the cost of server configuration increases, the cost of its power supply and cooling, so the gain from introducing virtualization is reduced, and the network settings for the server are complicated (you must manually configure the network settings for each virtual machine) and network switches.
In addition, you need to take into account the limitations on the number of expansion cards that fit in the server case, especially if virtual machines are deployed on blades or thin servers (for example, most blade servers even with mezzanine expansion cards support no more than six - eight Ethernet ports ).
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Introduced at the end of June, the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb / 24-Port Module simplifies the network connections of HP BladeSystem c-Class blades by consolidating an Ethernet network and a storage network into a single converged fabric. It enhances the virtualization capabilities of HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 network connections by supporting iSCSI, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols.
HP Virtual Connect technology has been used since 2006 as a component of the HP BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure, which simplifies the connection of blades to networks by pooling LAN and SAN addresses, which can be dynamically assigned to servers at the software level instead of hard hardware binding the network address to a specific server.
To simplify the network connections of large HP BladeSystem c-Class configurations (from four chassis to one thousand), an optional HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) package was developed to manage up to 250 Virtual Connect domains. Each domain can have up to four chassis.
As noted in the comments on our blog, the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb / 24-Port Module switching module in combination with the HP ProLiant BL (HPA) Blade, an integrated dual-port HP NC551i FlexFabric 10-Gb Ethernet adapter, also announced in June. see about him habrahabr.ru/company/hp/blog/98261 ) allows you to take advantage of all the charms of converged networks in the form of savings in the cost of purchasing network equipment, electricity, cooling and network administration, as well as automating changes in network parameters of virtual machines.
When connected to the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Module over a 10-gigabit Ethernet FlexFabric adapter provides up to eight I / O channels for the server, two of which can be Fiber Channel or iSCSI. When blades with an integrated FlexFabric adapter are installed in the HP BladeSystem chassis, all the network chassis settings specified in the module are automatically transferred to the new blade.
Virtual Connect technology provides wire-once configuration, i.e. after the initial connection of network cables, all operations on adding blades and their network connections to the network, moving and changing them are performed without switching wires from one control console.
The HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric module is installed inside the HP BladeSystem chassis and is equipped with eight SFP + ports for uplink connection to external Ethernet switches and Fiber Channel, which allows FlexFabric to connect to existing LAN and SAN networks, and sixteen ten-gigabit Ethernet ports to which cables from installed in the blades of flexfabric adapters.
The ten-gigabit link between the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric module and the FlexFabric adapter can be divided into four Ethernet network interfaces (Network Interface Cards, NICs), which are called FlexNIC in HP terminology. FlexFabric modules and adapters also implement the so-called FlexHBAs that act as physical Fiber Channel HBAs (usually PCI-Express expansion cards). The server operating system sees each FlexHBA as a separate HBA with its own driver. The same mechanism for virtualizing network connections Fiber Channel is also supported for iSCSI, including the iSCSI boot function.
The capacity of each channel of FlexNIC and FlexHBA can be changed in the range from 100 Mbit / s to 10 Gbit / s in 100 Mbit / s increments depending on the amount of traffic that a particular virtual machine creates and the priority of the application running on it.
Installing additional network controllers in the server is not always able to effectively solve this problem — together with each board, the cost of server configuration increases, the cost of its power supply and cooling, so the gain from introducing virtualization is reduced, and the network settings for the server are complicated (you must manually configure the network settings for each virtual machine) and network switches.
In addition, you need to take into account the limitations on the number of expansion cards that fit in the server case, especially if virtual machines are deployed on blades or thin servers (for example, most blade servers even with mezzanine expansion cards support no more than six - eight Ethernet ports ).
')
Introduced at the end of June, the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb / 24-Port Module simplifies the network connections of HP BladeSystem c-Class blades by consolidating an Ethernet network and a storage network into a single converged fabric. It enhances the virtualization capabilities of HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 network connections by supporting iSCSI, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols.
HP Virtual Connect technology has been used since 2006 as a component of the HP BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure, which simplifies the connection of blades to networks by pooling LAN and SAN addresses, which can be dynamically assigned to servers at the software level instead of hard hardware binding the network address to a specific server.
To simplify the network connections of large HP BladeSystem c-Class configurations (from four chassis to one thousand), an optional HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) package was developed to manage up to 250 Virtual Connect domains. Each domain can have up to four chassis.
As noted in the comments on our blog, the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb / 24-Port Module switching module in combination with the HP ProLiant BL (HPA) Blade, an integrated dual-port HP NC551i FlexFabric 10-Gb Ethernet adapter, also announced in June. see about him habrahabr.ru/company/hp/blog/98261 ) allows you to take advantage of all the charms of converged networks in the form of savings in the cost of purchasing network equipment, electricity, cooling and network administration, as well as automating changes in network parameters of virtual machines.
When connected to the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Module over a 10-gigabit Ethernet FlexFabric adapter provides up to eight I / O channels for the server, two of which can be Fiber Channel or iSCSI. When blades with an integrated FlexFabric adapter are installed in the HP BladeSystem chassis, all the network chassis settings specified in the module are automatically transferred to the new blade.
Virtual Connect technology provides wire-once configuration, i.e. after the initial connection of network cables, all operations on adding blades and their network connections to the network, moving and changing them are performed without switching wires from one control console.
The HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric module is installed inside the HP BladeSystem chassis and is equipped with eight SFP + ports for uplink connection to external Ethernet switches and Fiber Channel, which allows FlexFabric to connect to existing LAN and SAN networks, and sixteen ten-gigabit Ethernet ports to which cables from installed in the blades of flexfabric adapters.
The ten-gigabit link between the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric module and the FlexFabric adapter can be divided into four Ethernet network interfaces (Network Interface Cards, NICs), which are called FlexNIC in HP terminology. FlexFabric modules and adapters also implement the so-called FlexHBAs that act as physical Fiber Channel HBAs (usually PCI-Express expansion cards). The server operating system sees each FlexHBA as a separate HBA with its own driver. The same mechanism for virtualizing network connections Fiber Channel is also supported for iSCSI, including the iSCSI boot function.
The capacity of each channel of FlexNIC and FlexHBA can be changed in the range from 100 Mbit / s to 10 Gbit / s in 100 Mbit / s increments depending on the amount of traffic that a particular virtual machine creates and the priority of the application running on it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99299/
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