The option to enable NIC Port Sharing is available on those ports which are not used by any commissioned active partition.
When a partition is disabled, the ports used by it are available for reconfiguration (sharing, teaming, peer forwarding). When this disabled partition is enabled at a later point of time, it could lose a shared port if the port was reconfigured from shared to unshared. This is also true with respect to NIC port teaming and peer-forwarding. All settings will be lost on enabling the partition if the configurations were altered while the partition was in disabled state.
Note: When you add a platform, NIC sharing is disabled by default.
To enable NIC sharing
On the Fabric Manager user interface, point to System Administration, and then click CPF System.
The Details: CPF-System screen appears on the right pane.
Click Platforms and Partitions.
The Details: Platforms and Partitions screen appears on the right pane.
On the Platforms tab, double-click the platform for which you want to enable NIC port Sharing or Teaming. The Details: <platform name> screen appears.
Navigate to the Config Info tab.
Click Settings.
The Base Settings window appears.
Select the Share check box corresponding to the ports on which you want to enable Sharing.
The port icon for the selected ports changes to
. The Teaming and Peer Forwarding check boxes
appear. The Logical Port Count field
is enabled.In the Logical Port Count field, type the number of logical ports that you want for this port. This is the number of logical ports available on this port during commissioning of a partition image.
Notes:
Peer Forwarding is enabled by default when Sharing is enabled. Clear the check box if you wish to disable Peer Forwarding for a port.
The Fabric Manager user interface displays the valid range of logical ports. The Logical Port Count that you type should fall in the range displayed for that port.
When you disable sharing, the logical port count is set to zero by default.
(Optional) To enable teaming on the selected ports, select the Teaming check box.
Click Save.
The Confirm dialog box appears.
Note: Platform restart is required for the settings to take effect.
If you want the settings to take effect immediately, click Reboot Now and confirm to restart the platform, else, click Reboot Later.
The Details window appears.
Warning: Clicking Reboot Now will bring down all the partitions.
After the platform restarts and comes back to the Running state, navigate to the Config. Info tab and click Synchronize.
The status of the ports is updated.
NIC Teaming cannot be done if the port is being used by a partition.