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This chapter includes the following sections:
Each fabric interconnect has a set of ports in a fixed port module that you can configure as either server ports or uplink Ethernet ports. These ports are not reserved. They cannot be used by a Cisco UCS instance until you configure them. You can add expansion modules to increase the number of uplink ports on the fabric interconnect, or to add uplink Fibre Channel ports to the fabric interconnect.
You need to create LAN pin groups and SAN pin groups to pin traffic from servers to an uplink port.
Each fabric interconnect can include the following types of ports:
Server ports handle data traffic between the fabric interconnect and the adapter cards on the servers.
You can only configure server ports on the fixed port module. Expansion modules do not include server ports.
Uplink Ethernet ports handle Ethernet traffic between the fabric interconnect and the next layer of the network. All network-bound Ethernet traffic is pinned to one of these ports.
You can configure uplink Ethernet ports on either the fixed module or an expansion module. You can also configure the admin speed as 1Gbps or 10Gbps and assign a flow control policy to the port.
Uplink Fibre Channel ports handle FCoE traffic between the fabric interconnect and the next layer of the network. All network-bound FCoE traffic is pinned to one of these ports.
You can only configure uplink Fibre Channel ports on an expansion module. The fixed module does not include uplink Fibre Channel ports.
You can only configure server ports on the fixed port module. Expansion modules do not include server ports.
This task describes only one method of configuring ports. You can also configure ports from a right-click menu, from the General tab for the port, or in the LAN Uplinks Manager.
You can configure uplink Ethernet ports on either the fixed module or an expansion module. You can also configure the admin speed as 1Gbps or 10Gbps and assign a flow control policy to the port.
This task describes only one method of configuring uplink Ethernet ports. You can also configure uplink Ethernet ports from a right-click menu or from the General tab for the port.
If desired, change the properties for the default flow control policy and admin speed of the uplink Ethernet port.
An uplink Ethernet port channel allows you to group several physical uplink Ethernet ports (link aggregation) to create one logical Ethernet link for the purpose of providing fault-tolerance and high-speed connectivity. In Cisco UCS Manager, you create a port channel first and then add uplink Ethernet ports to the port channel. You can add up to eight uplink Ethernet ports to a port channel.
![]() Note |
Cisco UCS uses Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), not Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), to group the uplink Ethernet ports into a port channel. |
Configuring Server Ports with the Internal Fabric Manager
The Internal Fabric Manager provides a single interface where you can configure server ports for a fabric interconnect in a Cisco UCS instance. The Internal Fabric Manager is accessible from the General tab for that fabric interconnect.
Some of the configuration that you can do in the Internal Fabric Manager can also be done in nodes on the Equipment tab, on the LAN tab, or in the LAN Uplinks Manager.