Blade technology

[dtoflaherty]

I am new to blades and need an answer to my problem.

I have been tasked with reducing the complexity of our network cabling - ethernet switches, fibre switches etc. Our current environment has 8 chassis with blades distributed accross those. The virtual estate requires an upgrade and this is determined to be an ideal time to try and implement this lower network complexity and try to reduce cost.

There are 11 hosts that will be reduced to 8 ( there is eight because of a large volume of blades 460's g1 that are to be virtualised)

I have been asked to implement new Blades but with out changing the HP 1/10G Virtual Connect Ethernet Module. My network config on the new blades is to have a flex LOM adaptor which should give 2 10 NICs. These will be rolled back to 1 GB. i then will add a HBA in MEZ one and a QUAD port NIC in MEZ 2. i will then have my six NICs and 2 HBA tpo meet my minnimum reqs for the blade. Using this I can then usie the existing hardware.

I want to advise to upgrade the HP 1/10G Virtual Connect Ethernet Module to Flex ten modules and roll down to two modules for the FC and two for the eth. Can some one advise or confirm that this will work and then advise on an argument for investing in the Flex 10

[Torsten.]

I don't understand what interconnects you have in which slots, but keep in mind the mezzanine cards are hard wired to the interconnect bays, so you need to have the appropriate modules there (e.g. mezzanine cards are hard wired to ic slot 5+6 or 7+8, depending on server and chassis model.).

[Casper42]

It may not be well known but the 1/10 and 1/10-F modules are completely discontinued. You cannot buy new ones and mainstream Firmware support ended with 3.60 (any critical bug fixes would generate a 3.61 in the future) and so features in 3.70 and future versions will not be available if your VC domain has 1/10s in it anywhere.

If you go with Flex-10 modules and have at least G6 or higher servers, you will have 8 FlexNICs (4 per port) on a standard half height blade and you can customize all the networking to use those however you see fit. Different VLANs, change the bandwidth allocation, etc. You no longer need a 4 port Mezz and 4 extra Ethernet modules. This is "Flex-10 101 type stuff"
Keep in mind the flex-10 original is already on its way out as well. It was replaced last year by the "Flex-10/10D" which has a faster chip inside, more ports and DCB support for future features. Last I checked the retail price difference between the modules was like $200 so its not hugely more expensive either.

G7 and Gen8 when using the 554FLB can also merge the SAN Fabric into 1 set of Interconnects as well. So you have 3 FlexNICs and 1 FlexHBA per port. The FlexFabric module has uplinks that can be native Fibre Channel to your SAN and others for Ethernet.
You still only have 10Gb of bandwidth to use for both functions though. So if you want alot more bandwidth, Flex-10/10D and VC FC 8Gb being seperate along with HBA MEZZ cards in each blade will provide a lot of bandwidth but at some added cost.

Hope that helps.

If you need more help here, give me an idea of where you are from (City/Country) and I could also try to find a local Virtual Connect guru to help you. I work in the Los Angeles area myself.