UCS Technology Labs UCS B-Series SAN

Connectivity

Fibre Channel Switching Mode, End Host

Mode, and Uplink Configuration
Last updated: April 11, 2013

Task
Provision the UCS system to run in Fibre Channel End Host Mode (EHM), also called Network
Port Virtualizer (NPV) mode.
Provision the two ports for each FI according to the rack you have rented as Fibre Channel Uplink
ports.

Configuration
In the left navigation pane, click the Equipment tab, expand Fabric Interconnects, and click
Fabric Interconnect B (which happens to be running as primary in this screen shot). In the
right pane, click Configure Unified Ports.

Note the important warning telling us that if we change anything on either module (either
the
FEEDBACK

base slot with the first 32 ports or the Generic Expansion Module (GEM) if one is installed), it
will cause a disruption in traffic and it will IMMEDIATELY reboot that Fabric Interconnect. For
this reason, you would do this at the time of initial provisioning; if you must do it live, you would
perform this task on one FI at a time. Click Yes.

Click and drag the slider below the ports to the left into the desired position. Note the legend at
the bottom: All green ports are Ethernet, and all purple ports are Fibre Channel. Also note the
letter over each that indicates its port type.

Now we see that ports that are 11 and higher have changed to Fibre Channel, and by default all
are labeled with a B to indicate Uplink ports. Note that you cannot change port types on oddnumbered boundaries (for example, you cannot have ports 1-9 be Ethernet; it must be 1-8, or 110, etc.). This is because one ASIC controls every two ports. Click Finish.

If we console into FI-B, we can see that as soon as we clicked Finish, the FI began rebooting.

When FI-B has finished rebooting, reconnect to USCM (if logged out), go back to the left
navigation pane, click the Equipment tab, expand Fabric Interconnects, and click Fabric
Interconnect A. In the right pane, click Configure Unified Ports.

Note the important warning again and click Yes.

Click and drag the slider below the ports to the left into the desired position.

Again, we see that ports that are 11 and higher have changed to Fibre Channel, and by default
all are labeled with a B on to indicate Uplink ports. Click Finish.

If this is our primary, notice that we will be logged out of the system.

Again, if we console into FI-A, we can see that as soon as we clicked Finish the FI began
rebooting.

In the left navigation pane, click the SAN tab and click the SAN root entity. At the bottom of the
right pane, click SAN Uplinks Manager.

We can now see that we are already in End Host Mode (NPV), but this is where we could
change it if we wanted to.

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