Cisco Cisco UCS C22 M3 Rack Server Hoja De Datos
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Data Sheet
Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card
Cisco UCS C-Series Overview
Cisco
®
UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers extend unified computing innovations to an industry-standard form
factor to help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. Designed to operate both in
standalone environments and as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System
™
, the series employs Cisco
technology to help customers handle the most challenging workloads. The series incorporates a standards-based
unified network fabric, Cisco VM-FEX virtualization support, and Cisco Extended Memory Technology. It supports
an incremental deployment model and protects customer investments with a future migration path to unified
computing.
Product Overview
A Cisco innovation, the Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card is a virtualization-optimized Fibre Channel over
Ethernet (FCoE) PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 x8 10-Gbps adapter designed for use with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-
Mount Servers. The virtual interface card is a dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe adapter that can support up to
128 PCIe standards-compliant virtual interfaces, which can be dynamically configured so that both their interface
type (network interface card [NIC] or host bus adapter [HBA]) and identity (MAC address and worldwide name
[WWN]) are established using just-in-time provisioning. In addition, the Cisco UCS P81E can support network
interface virtualization and Cisco VM-FEX technology.
Features and Benefits
Unique to the Cisco Unified Computing System, the Cisco UCS P81E is optimized for virtualized environments, for
organizations that seek increased mobility in their physical environments, and for data centers that want reduced
TCO through NIC, HBA, cabling, and switch reduction.
The Cisco UCS P81E can present up to 128 virtual interfaces on a given server. The 128 virtual interfaces can be
dynamically configured by Cisco UCS Manager as either Fibre Channel or Ethernet devices (Figure 1). Initially, the
Cisco UCS P81E will support up to 2 Fibre Channel and 16 Ethernet devices. The number of virtual interfaces will
be increased over time. With Cisco UCS P81E, deployment of applications that require or benefit from multiple
Ethernet and Fibre Channel interfaces is no longer constrained by the available physical adapters.
To an operating system or a hypervisor running on a Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server, the virtual interfaces
appear as regular PCIe devices. In a virtualized environment, Cisco VM-FEX technology allows virtual links to be
centrally configured and managed without the complexity that traditional approaches interpose with multiple
switching layers in virtualized environments. I/O configurations and network profiles move along with virtual
machines, helping increase security and efficiency while reducing complexity. As a result of close cooperation
between Cisco and VMware, network policies and virtual interfaces can be applied to virtual machines in VMware
vCenter. The partnership also enables pass-through switching in the virtual switch, improving hypervisor
performance.