Helps reduce TCO by consolidating the overall number of NICs, HBAs, cables, and switches because LAN and SAN traffic run over the same adapter card and fabric
Creates fully functional unique and independent PCIe adapters and interfaces without requiring single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support from OSs or hypervisors
Allows these virtual interfaces and adapters to be configured and operated independently, just like physical interfaces and adapters
Creates a highly flexible I/O environment needing only one card for all I/O configurations
Unifies virtual and physical networking in a single infrastructure
Provides virtual machine visibility from the physical network and a consistent network operating model for physical and virtual servers
Enables configurations and policies to follow the virtual machine during virtual machine migration
Provides a pre-standard implementation of the IEEE 802.1BR Port Extender standard
Enables the card to be centrally managed and configured by Cisco UCS Manager
Provides a redundant path to the fabric interconnect using hardware-based fabric failover
Provides high I/O performance for demanding applications
Uses Priority Flow Control (PFC) to enable FCoE as part of the Cisco unified fabric