I have some questions about this mezzanine card. I opened a case on the server but noone was really familiar with this card. BTW...is there no way to post pictures on this forum. It would make explanation easier. We have M1000e, M820 Blades going through Pass Through Modules to Cisco Nexus switching.
- It appears these cards require an FCoE software initiator configured in the OS before a WWN can be seen from downstream storage switching and array. Is this accurate? I can't actually find anything stating this clearly so I want to verify. I don't see the WWNs from the OS currently.
- Is there any way to set a PXE VLAN through the NIC BIOS. We are using PXE over trunked ports so, we need to define the VLAN. I have seen this on many newer NICs but, can’t find where it is on these cards.
- It appears my colleagues have used the Qlogic NIC partitioning. Someone has partitioned the CNA. I'm not seeing much benefit doing NIC partitioning except for logical distinctions (which I don't care about) and QoS (that I prefer to do on the network switch side in the proposed environment). My preferred configuration is no partitioning. Combined FCoE and Ethernet heads out the CNA to the Nexus 5Ks that will split and redirect upstream to network or storage. Am I missing some benefit to add complication by partitioning the CNA?
- Also looking for a better understanding of the “Global Bandwidth Allocation” settings. I can see how this QoS at the CNA could be useful in certain environments, but if we plan to do QoS at the Nexus switch layer this seems redundant and unnecessary. Am I missing something?