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This chapter includes the following sections:
Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) drivers facilitate communication between supported operating systems and Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards (VICs).
Cisco UCS VIC driver ISO bundles include an eNIC driver and an fNIC driver. The eNIC is the driver for the Cisco UCS VIC Ethernet NIC. The fNIC is the driver for the Cisco UCS VIC Fibre Channel over Ethernet HBA.
fNIC is not supported in Cisco UCS Manager Release 2.5.
Cisco UCS Manager Release 2.5, which introduces Cisco UCS M-Series servers, continues to provide vNIC capabilities. Additionally, it provides for a new capability with its virtualized shared local storage. This virtual storage controller provides access to a virtual drive that is provided to the server through the shared storage controller and hard drives in the chassis. The virtual storage controller introduces a new PCIe device known as a SCSI NIC (sNIC), which is presented to the OS. The OS views these items as locally-attached SCSI devices.
The sNIC provides the pathway for SCSI commands from the server to the virtual drive. This controller is a new device to the OS and uses an sNIC driver that is loaded into the OS. Because the sNIC is a new PCIe device, the sNIC driver may not be part of some OS distributions. When that is the case, the sNIC driver must be loaded at the time of OS installation to see the storage device on the server. The sNIC driver, like the eNIC and fNIC drivers, is certified by the OS vendor and eventually included as part of the core OS install package. When the driver is present, the virtual drive is visible to the OS, and is presented as a standard hard drive connected through a RAID controller.
For a complete list of supported hardware and software, see the Hardware and Software Interoperability Matrix for this release located at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10477/prod_technical_reference_list.html