This blog post was originally written by Thomas Cantwell and Michael Schroeder. Send your suggestions or comments to WinServerBlogs@dell.com.
To read more technical articles about Windows Server 2012 and Dell, go to the Windows Server 2012 page on Dell TechCenter.
Introduction
This week at the 2013 Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas we’re demonstrating system management features that improve platform management and datacenter efficiency. A few of these features relate to Windows Server® 2012.
CDN – Consistent Device Naming
Have you ever had to rename or renumber the network ports in the OS to match the physical ports numbered on the back of a server after OS installation?
Background
PnP enumeration is the standard for automatically identifying devices and ensuring the right drivers are installed for a device. It has been around for decades. But, PnP enumeration is non-deterministic. This means it will discover and load drivers in the order received, and there is no way to ensure one device will be discovered ahead of another device. This is why devices in the OS are not necessarily “in order”, and are mismatched to the physical ports on the servers. Renaming network ports in hosts with a large NIC count isn’t fun. Now magnify that by a large number of servers.
Dell engineering considered this customer pain point and brought forward the solution to the PCI SIG (Special Interest Group) with a specification change to address this. Dell also worked with Microsoft to incorporate this capability into Windows Server® 2012, where Consistent Device Naming (CDN) is now available to help address this issue when deploying Windows.
Below is our MMS deck covering CDN:
Summary: CDN simplifies datacenter system and network port management – deployments for hosts or clusters can be simplified, and Microsoft System Center applications are beginning to leverage this capability.