User guide

NetXtreme II User Guide
September 2013
Broadcom Corporation
Page 192 NIC Partitioning: Broadcom NetXtreme II
®
Network Adapter User Guide Document INGSRVT78-CDUM100-R
NIC Partitioning: Broadcom NetXtreme II
®
Network Adapter User Guide
•Overview
• Configuring for NIC Partitioning
OVERVIEW
NIC partitioning (NPAR) divides a Broadcom NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC into multiple virtual NICs by having
multiple PCI physical functions per port. Each PCI function is associated with a different virtual NIC. To the OS and the
network, each physical function appears as a separate NIC port.
NOTE: Link speed cannot be configured for 1 Gbps when NPAR is enabled.
The number of partitions for each port is from one to four; thus, making a dual-port NIC capable of a maximum of eight
partitions. Each partition behaves as if it is an independent NIC port.
NOTE: On quad-port adapters:
• The 1G ports do not support NPAR.
• On 10G ports, only two functions per port are supported.
Benefits of a partitioned 10G NIC include:
• Reduced cabling and ports when used to replace many 1G NICs.
• Server segmentation with separate subnets/VLANs.
• High server availability with NIC failover and NIC link bandwidth aggregation.
• Server I/O virtualization with a virtual OS and monolithic OS support.
• Changes to the OS is not required.
• SLB type teaming is supported.
SUPPORTED OPERATING SYSTEMS FOR NIC PARTITIONING
The Broadcom NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters support NIC partitioning on the following operating systems:
• Windows Server 2008 family
• Windows Server 2012 family
• Linux 64-bit, RHEL 5.5 and later, SLES11 SP1 and later
• VMware ESX, ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.0, and ESXi 5.1.