User guide

HP Virtual Connect for Cisco Network Administrators (version 4.x)
Document Number: C01386629 Date: January 2014
page 12
Figure 5. Overview of c7000 midplane wiring – Full height modules
Full Height
FlexNIC capabilities
Flex-10 and FlexFabric adapters allow you to partition a 10Gb link into several smaller
bandwidth FlexNICs. Virtual machine applications often require increased network connections
per server, increasing network complexity while reducing the number of server resources.
Virtual Connect addresses this issue by letting you divide a 10Gb network connection into four
independent FlexNIC server connections (Figure 4). A FlexNIC is a physical PCIe function
(PF) that appears to the system ROM, OS, or hypervisor as a discrete physical NIC with its own
driver instance. It is not a virtual NIC contained in a software layer.