Installing and Using an Internal Silicom Bypass NIC Card

Silicom Internal Bypass NIC Cards

The Saisei Traffic Manager platform™ has been certified for use with a number of bypass NIC card that can be located internally to the server that the STM is running on. These cards are produced by Silicom and require the drivers to be loaded by the root user from the Ubuntu SSH shell before they can be utilized by the STM application. Once activated the bypass can be used to create a direct path for traffic when the STM data plane ceases to forward traffic.

Supported Silicom NIC’s

The following Silicom NIC’s are supported by the STM:

PE2G4BPi35LA-SD – Quad port 1G copper bypass with i350 chip (dual segment)
PE210G2BPi40-T-SD – Dual port 10G copper bypass with X540 chip (single segment)
PE210G2BPi9-SR-SD – Dual port 10G fiber SR bypass with i82599 chip (single segment)

Installing the Silicom Bypass Device Drivers

The Silicom devices drivers are installed as part of STM installation process. Checks are made during the installation process to look for installed Silicom cards and if found the drivers will be loaded and built as required.

Silicom cards that are added after the fact to a server will require users to rerun the installation process to add the current or a new version of software into the Alternate partition, if you have questions on how to do this please contact Saisei support by submitting a ticket.

There is no requirement to reload the system at this point however the drivers will be available for use.

Bypass Operation

Once installed the Silicom card will automatically bypass the STM server whenever the power is interrupted of there are software failures that cause the bypass watchdog to trigger.

If a Silicom card is installed when the STM is initially installed it will automatically show for each interface chosen to transport traffic.

If a Silicom card is added to the system post installation of the STM it may be necessary to configure the interface to know about the card.

Using the STM Web GUI log in and select the FlowCommand Tab and then select the Interfaces option in the Navigation Pane. Now select the interface in use and Modify.

As can be seen above there is a Bypass field and for Silicom cards installed from new will show the bypass type as "silicom", cards added port installation of the STM software may need this field set to "silicom" as necessary. Once configured all bypass functionality becomes available instantly.

You will also notice in the above screen shot a "Force Bypass" field, setting this field on an interface pair will cause ALL traffic to bypass the STM. This option should be used whenever upgrading or taking the server down for maintenance.

Once Bypass is set it is best to the save the configuration to both partitions.

After the maintenance window is complete or the system has been upgraded the Force Bypass check box should be unchecked allowing traffic to flow normal, this should also be save once complete.