Fabric Interconnect 6248 - Connecting 3rd party servers

[aries.itsme.ema]

Hi,

we are running out of free 10G ports of the Nexus5K environment and until the network extension is added, I am considering to connect 3rd party (Del, HP) servers to the FI6248 that are used for Ethernet only. I couldn't find any documentation which describes if this is supported or not. 

Are the Server or Appliance ports support basic ethernet connectivity for 3rd party servers?

Thanks, Sandor

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

Greetings.

The FIs only support uplink, server, and appliance (storage)connectivity ports.  The server ports are either Cisco VIC connections from supported UCS Rack server, Chassis IOM connections, or Fabric Extenders Fex connections (i.e. 2232PP).

None UCS server connections are not supported.

Thanks,

Kirk..

[aries.itsme.ema]

Thanks for your answer.

[sreevani]

Hii Greetings,

Connecting 3rd party servers:

Cisco uses CNAs within the UCS server architecture. The CNAs use the FCoE protocol as defined by the ANSI T11 Standards Committee to provide SAN connectivity. The FC traffic is encapsulated inside the ethernet frames. Instead of the buffer-to-buffer (B2B) credit system used in native fabric topologies, FCoE relies on a new set of Ethernet standards to enhance the ethernet protocol to provide lossless transport. UCS CNAs are then connected to a fabric interconnect (via fabric extender modules) to provide connectivity to SAN and LAN. Thus every server within Cisco’s unified fabric technology is capable of connecting to both the LAN and SAN. Network connectivity to UCS servers is provided through the use of Cisco UCS 6100/6200 series Fabric Interconnects (FIs), which separates the LAN and SAN traffic and directs it to the corresponding upstream LAN and SAN switches.

Thank you.