topic Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue in BladeSystem - General

C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

IanB72 — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:25:14 GMT

Hi.

I've inherited a HP Blade C700 Blade Chassis, into which I've installed 2 x HP BL460 (G6) blades.

I've installed the OS without issue and now need to install MS Clustering, I've successfully managed to create two NICs using the Flex 10 Embedded Ethernet NICs, these have been teamed. However when I come to create the NIC for clustering it uses the HP NC326M (on-board Blade NIC?).

My issue is that these NICs are both connected to Port 1 & 2 on Bay 5 & 6 respectively. However as far I can see Bay 5 & 6 are empty!

Bay 5 & 6 are supposedly connected to Mezzanine Slot 2 (tick box checked) but again this is empty.

Is there any way to disable Mezzanine slot 2 (removing the tick has no effect) or if not bypassing the HP NC326M NICs and using the Flex 10 for my cluster heartbeat connection.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

Torsten. — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:32:35 GMT

What kind of interconnects do you have? The page you sent is for lookup only.

Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

Matti_Kurkela — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:21:52 GMT

A BL460 G6 is a half-height blade, so it has 2 integrated NICs, which will connect to bays 1 & 2. If you have Virtual Connect, each of those Flex10 NICs can be presented as multiple virtual NICs.

The connections between the mezzanine slots and the I/O modules are hardwired in the chassis backplane: they cannot be changed by any software configuration. A dual-port NIC plugged into mezzanine slot 2 will connect to bays 5 & 6, always. A quad-port NIC in mezzanine slot 2 would appear as one port in each bay 5, 6, 7 & 8. This requires a lot of I/O modules, but allows for minimization of single points of failure.

The mapping of mezzanine slot 1 is different: a NIC in that slot will only map to bays 3 & 4. With the c7000 chassis and a half-height blade, you will be restricted to 2 NIC ports only.

Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

IanB72 — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:48:08 GMT

Hi.

Thanks for the replies. I'm new relatively new to this technology so will read and digest.

The interconnect bays are as follows,

BAY 1 (LAN) HP VC Flex-10 Enet Module

BAY 2 (LAN) HP VC Flex-10 Enet Module

BAY 3 (SAN) HP VC 8GB 24- Port Module

BAY 4 (SAN) HP VC 8GB 24- Port Module

Would removing the HP NC326M from within the blade stop them being presented in VC mgr or would the blade stop working?

Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

Psychonaut — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:01:41 GMT

No it won't - go ahead and pop the cover and remove the 2nd mezz card. Just make sure to remove the second and not the first, which is your FC mezz card.

Have you checked the BIOS to see if you can disable the card there; I think it's possible from PCI Device Enable/Disable.

Re: C700 - Interconnect Port Mapping Issue

IanB72 — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:32:22 GMT

I've already disabled the BIOS on the Blade (BL460) and it is still being dispalyed in the server profile as Port 3 & 4 assigned to Mezz2.

will try removing the NIC and see what happens!

Thanks