User's Manual

I/O Fabric Management 361
11
I/O Fabric Management
The chassis can hold up to six I/O modules (IOMs), each of which can be
pass-through or switch modules.
The IOMs are classified into three groups—A, B, and C. Each group has two
slots—Slot 1 and Slot 2. The slots are designated with letters, from left to
right, across the back of the chassis: A1 | B1 | C1 | C2 | B2 | A2. Each server
has slots for two mezzanine cards (MCs) to connect to the IOMs. The MC
and the corresponding IOM must have the same fabric.
Chassis IO is segregated into 3 discrete data paths by letter: A, B and C.
These paths are described as “FABRICS” and support Ethernet, Fibre
Channel or InfiniBand. These discrete fabric paths are split into 2 IO
“Banks”, bank one and two. Each server IO adapter (Mezzanine Card or
LOM) can have either 2 or 4 ports depending on capability. These ports are
split out evenly to IOM banks one and two to allow for redundancy. When
you deploy your Ethernet, iSCSI or FibreChannel networks, span their
redundant links across banks one and two for maximum availability. We
denote the discrete IOM with the fabric Identifier and the Bank number.
Example: “A1” denotes Fabric “A” in bank “1”. “C2” Denotes Fabric “C” in
Bank “2”.
The chassis supports three fabric or protocol types. The IOMs and Mezzanine
Cards in a group must have the same or compatible fabric types.
• Group A IOMS are always connected to the servers' on-board Ethernet
adapters; the fabric type of Group A is always Ethernet.
•For
Group B, the IOM slots are permanently connected to the first MC
(
mezzanine card) slot in each server module.
•For
Group C , the IOM slots are permanently connected to the second MC
(mezzanine card)
in each server module.
NOTE: In the CMC CLI, IOMs are referred to by the convention, switch- n :
A1=switch-1, A2=switch-2, B1=switch-3, B2=switch-4, C1=switch-5, and C2=
switch-6.