Often, enabling a new technology in your infrastructure comes at a cost. Either the technology requires significant training, other tangentially related features may not function as you expect, or the technology may fall outside the scope of the tools you use to manage your infrastructure. Fortunately, this is not the case with Advanced NPAR. In fact, using Advanced NPAR has the following benefits:
- Because dedicated NICs typically route management traffic, Advanced NPAR changes do not affect iDRAC and other management traffic.
- Dell helps to simplify and automate Advanced NPAR configuration by integrating the process within the server profile template. Once IT enables Advanced NPAR in a template, they can reuse that template to make future configurations use the technology.
- The Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), a protocol running at layer 2 of the OSI model, continues to function with Advanced NPAR. IT teams often use LLDP for network discovery and network monitoring. Dell recommends leaving LLDP enabled.
- Advanced NPAR does not require any proprietary discovery protocols, such as is necessary with Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), thus removing any vendor-specific concerns.
- Advanced NPAR settings appear within the familiar configuration screens of the Dell PowerEdge Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), an interface between the OS and firmware, and are also accessible within OME-M.
- Advanced NPAR leverages the advanced packet processing and classification capabilities of the Broadcom NIC, making the implementation transparent to the host OS and applications.