You may want bare metal servers and virtual machines (VMs) in your Ethernet customer corporate LAN environment to participate as members of a ClearPath Forward secure fabric. However, IP addresses within the ClearPath Forward fabric will likely have a different subnet address from your Ethernet customer corporate LAN. To include your bare metal servers and virtual machines in a secure fabric, you may optionally purchase a 12-port InfiniBand-Ethernet gateway switch. You can order it at the same time that you order your fabric, or you can order it separately as a field upgrade.
This InfiniBand-Ethernet gateway switch includes a Gateway License. The switch and license allow communication between the ClearPath Forward fabric and your Ethernet customer corporate LAN. Within the fabric, network traffic uses the high-speed InfiniBand Interconnect.
In the preceding example, NEPP, Partition 4, Bare Metal System, and VM2 are part of Secure Fabric 1.
The Unisys service representative can set up the InfiniBand-Ethernet gateway switch when the fabric is installed or when the switch field upgrade is performed.
Note: During configuration of the InfiniBand-Ethernet gateway switch, you will need the Subnet Tag (pkey) values for each secure fabric. For more information on secure fabrics, refer to Secure Fabrics.
Secure Fabric Subnet Tags (pkeys)
You include PEPP partitions and NEPPs in a secure fabric by using the Fabric Manager to give them a common Subnet Tag (referred to as a pkey in InfiniBand terminology). To include bare metal systems and VMs on your customer corporate LAN in a secure fabric, you assign them the same Subnet Tag that you assign to PEPP partitions and NEPPs in the secure fabric.
How the Switch Functions
With the gateway license installed and applied, the InfiniBand-Ethernet gateway switch can run in Gateway mode. This enables InfiniBand and Ethernet traffic to coexist in the switch. This effectively splits the hardware into two separate switches, an InfiniBand switch and an Ethernet switch. You choose which switch ports operate in InfiniBand mode and which operate in Ethernet mode. The InfiniBand mode ports are connected to the InfiniBand hosts or other switches. The Ethernet mode ports are connected to the customer corporate LAN.
While operating in this configuration, gateway capabilities can be configured to enable passing traffic between the InfiniBand and Ethernet hosts. Network traffic does not pass between these two switches unless deliberately enabled via a proxy-arp communication path.