Auto Port Aggregation Query

[Tim Hempstead]

Hi,

We have a Superdome with four Production vPars. We have been asked to implement HP APA to remove the single point of failure which is each vPars connection to the network.

Now, we have APA implemented on one of vPars but both of the network connections go to a single switch and obviously Networks want that changed so each connection goes to a separate switch. The current configuration appears to be in Manual mode with load balancing via MAC address.

Does anyone have any pointers at what we need to look at so that we can get this configured and avoid any pitfalls along the way, (the existing configuration predates my involvement with the server and I've never touched APA before).

For reference we are running HPUX 11.11 and the switches concerned are Cisco 6509's (according to our Network guys). I have already checked for spare NICs in each vPar.

Tim

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Tim,

As far as I know APA will work in a multi switch environment. My experience is that the bigger problem is getting the Cisco switches to permit one IP address to span two pieces of hardware. This can be done, and is the major issue.

SEP

[Court Campbell]

It really depends on the type(s) of switches ytou are using and what they support. It also depends on if you are looking for just a high availability scenario or a high throughput/high availability scenario. If you just need high availability then you can use lan monitor mode. This will give you failover capability. If you want to do trunking for more throughput both your vpar environment and the switch ports need to be setup using the same trunking mode. You should get with your network admin and have him setup a port on another switch. Then plug one of your lan cards that is apart of an aggregate group into that other port. Here is a link to the APA Guide. Here is a link to the guide:

http://docs.hp.com/en/J4240-90035/J4240-90035.pdf

look at chapters 4 and 5.