Mezzanine adapters

A huge variety of mezzanine adapters, also known as Virtual Interface Cards (VICs), is available from Cisco for both B-Series blade servers and C-Series rack servers. Older adapters are fixed port and not optimized for contemporary virtualized server environments. There are some older third-party network cards also available as an option. Newer third-generation adapters are optimized for virtualization and can provide 256 dynamic virtual adapters. The number of virtual adapters is dependent on the VIC model. These virtual adapters can be configured as Ethernet (vNIC) or Fibre Channel (vHBA) devices. All virtualization-optimized VICs also support VM-FEX technology. Our focus will be on the mezzanine adapters, which are virtualization optimized.

VICs for blade servers

VICs are available in the form factor of a mezzanine card. All new VICs provide dynamic virtual vNIC or vHBA interfaces for server-side connectivity. The latest Cisco 1300 VIC series can only support UCS 6200 and 6300 series Fabric Interconnects, whereas the Cisco 1200 VIC series can support UCS 6200 and 6100 series. In addition, 1300 series VICs support PCIe Gen 3.0 for greater bandwidth with the network offload support of NVGRE and VXLAN for enhanced performance and can create 256 NICs or HBAs without requiring SR-IOV support from hypervisors or operating systems.

UCS third-generation VIC 1380

The specifications of VIC 1380 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNICs (Ethernet) or vHBAs (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 80 GB network throughput
• Mezzanine form factor
• Compatibility with UCS M3 and M4 blade servers

UCS third-generation VIC 1340

The specifications of the VIC 1340 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 40-80 GB network throughput
• Modular LOM form factor
• Compatibility with UCS M3 and M4 blade servers.

UCS second-generation VIC 1280

The specifications of the VIC 1280 are:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 80 GB network throughput
• Mezzanine form factor
• Compatibility with UCS M2 (B230, B440) and all M3 blade servers

UCS second-generation VIC 1240

The specifications of the VIC 1240 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 40 GB network throughput with optional 80 GB throughput using optional port expander in mezzanine slot
• LAN-on-motherboard form factor
• Compatibility with all M3 blade servers

VICs for rack-mount servers

VICs are available as PCIe cards. All new VICs provide dynamic virtual vNIC or vHBA interfaces for server-side connectivity.

UCS third-generation VIC 1387

The specifications of the VIC 1387 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• PCIe 3.0 x 8 form factor
• 80 GB network throughput
• Compatibility with UCS C220 M4, C240 M4, and 3160 rack-mount servers

UCS third-generation VIC 1385

The specifications of the VIC 1385 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• PCIe 3.0 x 8 form factor
• 80 GB network throughput
• Compatibility with UCS C220 M4, C240 M4, and C460 M4 rack-mount servers

UCS second-generation VIC 1285

The specifications of the VIC 1285 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 2 x 40 GB QSFP network throughput
• Compatibility with UCS C22 M3, C24 M3, C220 M3, C240 M3, and C460 M4 rack-mount servers

UCS second-generation VIC 1225

The specifications of the VIC 1225 are as follows:

• 256 dynamic vNIC (Ethernet) or vHBA (Fibre Channel) interfaces
• VM-FEX support for virtualized environments
• Hardware failover without OS driver
• 20 GB network throughput
• Compatibility with UCS M2 (C460, C260) and all M3 rack-mount servers

For a quick comparison of mezzanine card specifications, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10277/prod_models_comparison.html#~tab-a.
Cisco VIC cards are also famous by their code name, Palo.