InfiniBand Private Network Physical Connections (Exadata Storage Servers)

Each Exadata Storage Server contains one dual-ported Sun QDR InfiniBand PCIe Low Profile host channel adapter (HCA). The two ports in the InfiniBand HCA are bonded together to increase available bandwidth. When bonded, the two ports appear as a single port, with a single IP address assigned to the two bonded ports, resulting in one IP address for InfiniBand private network connections for each Exadata Storage Server.

The two ports in the InfiniBand HCA connects to a different leaf switch to provide redundancy between the Exadata Storage Servers and the leaf switches. The following figure shows how redundancy is achieved with the InfiniBand connections between the Exadata Storage Servers and the leaf switches in a half rack configuration.