Deployment Guide

4 Network Partition (NPAR) Technology and VMware Virtual Switch comparison using QLogic BCM57800 | version 1.0
1 Overview
When designing networks, one very important consideration is how much bandwidth to allocate to the
different devices that need varying levels of throughput. Where this bandwidth management occurs is
generally based on:
 Where bottlenecks occur
 What traffic types need prioritization (for example, Multicast, e-commerce applications, VoIP)
 General business needs
Techniques for bandwidth management include:
 Data compression to reduce the size of the data being transmitted
 Caching to store frequently used data locally instead of transmitting it multiple times
 Traffic shaping/bandwidth prioritization to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency and/or
increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds
Numerous bandwidth management techniques can alleviate multiple throughput issues on a network. This
application note focuses on traffic shaping to achieve optimal throughput through prioritization using the tools
provided by the QLogic BCM57800 series Converged Network Adapter (CNA), VMware and VMware’s two
virtual switch types: the vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) and the vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).
This document provides four configuration examples utilizing:
 QLogic NPAR with a VMware VSS
 VMware VSS with traffic shaping and NPAR
 VMware VDS with traffic shaping and NPAR
 VMware VDS with VM network resource pools and NPAR
Note: The QLogic BCM57800 series network adapter’s bandwidth allocation fields take precedence over
any VSS or VDS traffic shaping settings.