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Input output fabrics
The following sections contain information about Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 Input output fabrics.
Input output fabrics
The internal connection of the main I/O subsystem in MX7000 enclosure is referred to as fabric A and B. These fabrics are
connected using a direct orthogonal connection between sleds in the front of the chassis and I/O fabric modules in the rear. The
mating connection on the sleds is on the mezzanine cards, which can install into location A or B on the sled.
Each fabric A and B allows for two IOMs (that is, A1 and A2, or B1 and B2) for redundancy. Each IOM connects to all 8 compute
nodes through the orthogonal connectors. The connection from the IOM to each compute node (The mezzanine card on the
compute node) is a x8 bi-directional link. Depending on the interface, all the lanes within the link may not be used, however the x8
provides a path for future high-bandwidth fabric types.
Standalone pass through modules
Two stand alone Ethernet pass through modules are supported in the initial release, a 10G (Base-T) and 25 GbE pass through
module. The pass-through IOMs plug into the fabric A or B IOM slots in the chassis. These IOMs redrive, or pass through the link
signals without any switching. Each shall provide 16 internal server-facing ports and 16 external user-facing ports.
NOTE: Only the ports 1-8 are active, when compute sleds with dual-port mezzanine adapters are configured with the
pass-through modules. The ports 9-16 require a quad-port mezzanine adapter.
Front sled to rear port mappings
The external port assignments of pass-thru modules are fixed due to the direct routing connection internal to the system and the
IOM itself.
NOTE: If storage or other peripheral sleds are installed that do not support fabric A/B connections, the corresponding
ports on the I/O modules mapping to these slots are not active. This is also the case for any compute sled that does not
have a mezzanine card that is installed for the particular IOM (A or B) in the system.
A standard size compute sled is configured with dual port fabric A/B mezzanine maps to a single port on each (A or B) I/O module.
Table 6. Compute sleds dual-port mapping
Compute sled
IOM x1 (top)
IOM x2 (bottom)
1
1
1
2
2
2
3
3
3
4
4
4
5
5
5
6
6
6
7
7
7
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