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BLADEOS 6.5.2 Application Guide
BMD00220, October 2010 Chapter 12: Virtual NICs 159
vNIC Teaming Failover
For NIC failover in a non-virtualized environment, when a service group’s uplink ports fail or are
disconnected, the switch disables the affected group’s server ports, causing the server to failover to
the backup NIC and switch.
However, in a virtualized environment, disabling the affected server ports would disrupt all vNIC
pipes on those ports, not just those that have lost their uplinks (see Figure 19).
Figure 19 Regular Failover in a Virtualized Environment
To avoid disrupting vNICs that have not lost their uplinks, BLADEOS 6.5 and the Emulex Virtual
Fabric Adapter provide vNIC-aware failover. When a vNIC group’s uplink ports fail, the switch
cooperates with the affected NIC to prompt failover only on the appropriate vNICs. This allows the
vNICs that are not affected by the failure to continue without disruption (see Figure 20 on
page 160).
HypervisorNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
vSwitch
VM 3
VM 4
HypervisorNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
vSwitch
VM 1
VM 2
Servers
Port 1
Port 2
Port 10
Port 11
VNIC
Group 1
VNIC
Group 2
X
Primary
Switch
To Backup
Switch
Virtual
Pipes
Port 1 link failure automatically
disables associated server ports,
prompting failover on all VMs
X
X