Deployment Guide

7 Network Partition (NPAR) Technology and VMware Virtual Switch comparison using QLogic BCM57800 | version 1.0
Figure 2 identifies the BCM57840 NPAR partitions 1 and 2 for port 1 assigned to the VMware ESXi host’s
VSS and VDS networking functions.
VMware Vmnic partition identification
Table 1 lists the pros and cons of the QLogic BCM57840 NPAR technology:
QLogic BCM57800 Series NPAR characteristics
QLogic BCM57800 Series NPAR characteristics
PROs
CONs
Ease of use
Unable to adjust bandwidth allocation
within VMware ESXi
Reduced network cabling
Teaming support only available between
partitions of separate physical ports
Switch agnostic
Bandwidth allocation for TX traffic only
Up to 8 NPAR partitions per network
adapter
NPAR technology can only be enabled
per adapter not per port of the same
adapter
Superior solution for servers with limited
PCIe slots (ex. Blade servers)
Can be confusing if a server with a large
number of PCIe slots has NPAR enabled
on multiple adapters