Lenovo Emulex 4Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) User Guide
- June 3, 2024
- Lenovo
Table of Contents
Emulex 4Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)
User Guide
Emulex 4Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)
The Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter
enables high-performance connection to a storage area network (SAN). Thanks to
the innovative design of the IBM BladeCenter midplane, this Fibre Channel
adapter operates without the need for an SFP thereby, hence saving you
significant hardware costs. Each adapter provides dual paths to the SAN
switches to ensure full redundancy, while the exclusive firmware-based
architecture allows firmware and features to be upgraded without taking the
server off-line or rebooting, and without the need to upgrade the driver.
This card is installed into the CFFv slot of the supported blade server and
provides connections to BladeCenter I/O modules located in bays 3 and 4 of the
supported BladeCenter chassis. The CFFv slot is a PCI-X 2.0 slot. The Emulex 4
Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)
Did you know?
This expansion card connects directly to the midplane without having to use
cables or SFP modules. By eliminating these components for up to 14 servers,
the resulting savings alone cover the BladeCenter chassis investment.
When using this CFFv adapter, you can simultaneously use a CFFh adapter to
enable more types of I/O-supported blade servers such as the HS21 when
installed on the IBM BladeCenter H chassis. You can upgrade the firmware of
Emulex Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) without taking the server offline or
rebooting. This is an exclusive Emulex feature that minimizes downtime and
protects the investment in a client’s infrastructure.
Click here to check for updates
Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter
(Withdrawn) (withdrawn product)
Part number information
Table 1. Ordering part number and feature code
Description | Part number | Feature code |
---|---|---|
Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter | 43W6859 |
2994
This part number includes the following items:
- One Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter
- IBM Getting Started Guide (flyer)
- Documentation CD Version 1.0, which contains the Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for
- IBM BladeCenter Installation and User’s Guide
- Safety Information document
- End user license agreement
Features
The expansion card has the following features and benefits:
- Enables high-speed and dual-port connection to a Fibre Channel SAN
- Integrated design allows use of a CFFh adapter in the BladeCenter H chassis
- Comprehensive virtualization capabilities with support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and Virtual Fabric
- Simplified installation and configuration using common HBA drivers
- Efficient administration via HBAnyware for HBAs anywhere in the SAN
- The common driver model eases management and enables upgrades independent of HBA firmware
- Supports BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager
IBM BladeCenter leads the industry in delivering integrated fabric switching
to the blade server environment. Integrated fabric switching eases deployment,
simplifies the data center, reduces cabling and optical transceivers (SFPs),
and lowers costs. BladeCenter clients have the flexibility to choose from a
variety of SAN switch vendor architectures. The BladeCenter SAN switch module
portfolio now includes QLogic, Brocade, and Cisco.
Each BladeCenter server provides redundant connections to data and storage
networks. Clients can configure their blade servers with dual-port host bus
adapters and be assured that they will always have a connection to their
Storage Area Network (SAN) via BladeCenter’s high availability midplane.
Through integration, BladeCenter eliminates the fiber cables from the server
to the switch. This not only reduces the opportunity for misconfiguration, it
lowers the expense for cables and optical transceivers (SFPs), and reduces
potential points of failure while increasing network availability.
Specifications
The expansion card has the following specifications:
- Fibre Channel specifications:
- Bandwidth: Burst transfer rate of 800 Mbytes/sec full-duplex per port
- Support for both FCP-SCSI and IP protocols
- Support for point-to-point fabric connection: F-Port Fabric Login
- Support for FCAL and FCAL-2 FL-Port Login
- Support for Fibre Channel services class 2 and 3
- Support for full-duplex operation
Single-chip design with two completely independent 4 Gb serial Fibre Channel ports. Each port provides:
- Reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processor
- Integrated serializer/deserializer
- Receive direct memory access (DMA) sequencer
- Frame buffer
- Host data transfer: Burst data transfer up to 1 GB per second.Onboard DMA: DMA controller for each port: Transmit and receive.
- Frame buffer first in, first out (FIFO): Integrated 63 KB transmit and 32 KB receive frame buffer for each data channel
Internal memory:
- 1.5 MB internal high-speed SRAM, ECC protected
- 4 MB non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), 2 MB per port
Operating environment
The expansion card is supported in this environment:
-
Temperature and altitude
Operating
10° to 52°C (50° to 125.6°F) at an altitude of 0 to 914 m (0 to 3,000 ft)
10° to 49°C (50° to 120.2°F) at an altitude of 0 to 3,000 m (0 to 10,000 ft)
Non-operating: 40° to 65°C (-40° to 149°F) at an altitude of 0 to 12,000 m (0 to 39,370 ft) -
Humidity
Operating: 8% to 80%, non-condensing
Non-operating: 5% to 80%, non-condensing
Supported servers and I/O modules
The Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) is supported in the IBM
BladeCenter servers listed in Table2.
Table 2. Supported servers
The Emulex 4 Gb FC Expansion Card (CFFv) is also supported in an expansion blade when the blade serverEmulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter (Withdrawn) (withdrawn product).supports both the Emulex expansion card and that particular expansion blade. Figure 2 shows where the CFFv card is installed in a BladeCenter server.
Figure 2. Location on the BladeCenter server planar where the CFFv card is
installed
See IBM ServerProven for the latest information about the expansion cards
supported by each blade server
type:http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/.
IBM BladeCenter chassis support is based on the blade server type on which the
expansion card is installed.
Consult ServerProven to see which chassis each blade server type is supported
in:http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/.
The Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) supports the following I/O
modules installed in the IBM BladeCenter chassis.
- Fibre Channel Switch Modules
- QLogic 4 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module
- QLogic 8 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module
Specific I/O modules supported with the Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) are shown in Table 3. The table also lists the BladeCenter chassis that support an I/O module. One I/O module must be installed in I/O bay 3 or 4 in the BladeCenter chassis. For redundancy and performance purposes, we recommend you install twoI/O modules in the chassis, one in bay 3 and one in bay 4. Table 3. I/O modules supported with the Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)
Brocade 4 Gb 20-Port SAN Switch Module | 32R1812 | N | Y | Y |
---|---|---|---|---|
Brocade 4 Gb 10-Port SAN Switch Module | 32R1813 | Y | Y | Y |
Cisco 4 Gb 20-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 39Y9280 | N | Y | Y |
Cisco 4 Gb 10-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 39Y9284 | Y | Y | Y |
QLogic 4 Gb 20-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 26R0881 | N | Y | Y |
QLogic 4 Gb 10-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 32R1904 | N | Y | Y |
QLogic 20-Port 4 Gb SAN Switch Module | 43W6725 | N | Y | Y |
QLogic 10-Port 4 Gb SAN Switch Module | 43W6724 | Y | Y | Y |
QLogic 4 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module | 43W6723 | Y | Y | Y |
McDATA 4 Gb 20-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 32R1833 | N | Y | Y |
McDATA 4 Gb 10-Port Fibre Channel Switch Module | 32R1905 | N | Y | Y |
QLogic 20-Port 8 Gb SAN Switch Module | 44X1905 | Y | Y | Y |
QLogic 8 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module | 44X1907 | Y | Y | Y |
QLogic 4 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module | 43W6723 | Y | Y | Y |
Important considerations:
- The IBM BladeCenter Optical Pass-thru Module, 39Y9316, is not supported
- The BladeCenter S does not support all I/O modules, as Table 3 shows.
- Many of the I/O modules listed in the table also support the Multi-Switch Interconnect Module (MSIM) and
- MSIM-HT. However, we do not list this support here since CFFv expansion cards do not support the use of the MSIM or MSIM-HT.
Popular configurations
This section illustrates how the Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card
(CFFv) can be used in configurations. Figure 3 shows the CFFv card installed
in a supported blade server, which is in turn installed in a BladeCenter
chassis. The chassis is connected to the IBM System Storage DS3400. The RAID
functionality is provided by the external storage system. The parts used are
listed in Table 4.
Figure 3. IBM BladeCenter connected to an external IBM System Storage DS3400
storage solution
Table 4. Components used when connecting Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion
Card (CFFv) to external disk storage (as shown in Figure 3)
Diagram reference| Part number/machine type| Description|
Quantity
---|---|---|---
1| Varies| IBM BladeCenter HS21 or another supported server| 1 to 14
2| 43W6859| Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)| 1 per server
3| Varies| Supported BladeCenter chassis*| 1
4| Varies| Supported Fibre Channel Switch module (see Table 3)| 1 or 2
5| 1726-41X or 1726-42X| IBM System Storage DS3400 (Single or Dual
Controller)| 1
6| 1727| Optional IBM System Storage EXP3000 (Single or Dual ESM)| 1 to 3
7| 39R6536| DS3000 Partition Expansion License| 1
*Note: The expansion card can be installed in servers in the BladeCenter
S (8886). However, by doing so you lose the ability to connect to the
BladeCenter S Disk Storage modules (DSMs). The Fibre Channel expansion card
will go in the place of the SAS expansion card needed to connect to the DSMs.
This configuration also requires cabling between the chassis and the storage
server and between the storage server and expansion units. (The cable part
numbers are not listed in table 4.)
Operating system support
The Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) supports the following operating systems:
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Enterprise Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Standard Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2003 R2, Standard x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x86 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Enterprise x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Enterprise x86 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard x86 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Web x64 Edition
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Web x86 Edition
- Novell NetWare 6.5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS for AMD64/EM64T
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS for x86
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 ES for AMD64/EM64T
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 ES for x86
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 WS/HPC for AMD64/EM64T
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 WS/HPC for x86
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server Edition
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server x64 Edition
- Sun Solaris 10
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 for AMD64/EM64T
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 for x86
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 for AMD64/EM64T
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 for x86
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for AMD64/EM64T
- SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for x86
- VMware ESX 3.5
- VMware ESX Server 3.0
- VMware ESXi 3.5
See IBM ServerProven for the latest information about the specific versions
and service packs supported:
http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/. Select the blade
server and then select the expansion card to see the supported operating
systems.
Related publications
For more information refer to these documents:
-
Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) Installation and User’s Guide
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-5072150 -
IBM U.S. Announcement Letter for the Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv)
http://ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi- bin/ssialias?infotype=dd&subtype=ca&&htmlfid=897/ENUS107-538 -
IBM BladeCenter Interoperability Guide
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-5073016 -
IBM Redbooks publication IBM BladeCenter Products and Technology, SG24-7523
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247523.html
Related product families
Product families related to this document are the following: Blade Storage
Adapters
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References
- Enterprise Business Server Solutions | IBM
- IBM BladeCenter Products and Technology
- Blade Storage Adapters > Lenovo Press
- Emulex 4 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFv) for IBM BladeCenter (Withdrawn) Product Guide (withdrawn product) > Lenovo Press
- Copyright and Trademark Information | Lenovo US | Lenovo US
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