topic Re: Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question in BladeSystem - General

Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question

Philip Buckley-Mellor — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:30:21 GMT

Since VC 3.3 you can now do both mapped and tunnelled VLANs in one domain but as I've not moved to 3.3 yet (slow change process at my company :( ) I have a question about how I can use this.

Specifically if I have two VLAN, say 100 and 200, can I expose both VLANs up a tunnelled FlexNIC to a VLAN-aware OS such as ESXi to be broken out by its own vSwitch/port-group mechanism AND also present VLAN 100 to another server's FlexNIC #1 and VLAN 200 to the same server's FlexNIC #2?

Basically most of my servers are ESXi boxes but I also have some physical DB boxes such as MSSQL & Oracle RAC that I'd rather make believe have multiple untagged FlexNICs.

Thank you.

Re: Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question

Steven Clementi — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:51:36 GMT

Tunneling is only allowed on single Network Profiles since well... a "Shared Uplink" means you have various defined networks configured.

To be honest, in a small configuration where there are a minimum number of VLANS... It is probably easiest to re-configure and use a Shared Uplink Set and define all of your VLAN's there. Then you can map any of those vlans to any of the nics on your servers... easily accommodating your particular environment.

The selection tool for "Multiple Networks" is totally simple to utilize now allowing several options. you would configure multiple networks for your ESXi Servers... and specific Networks for your Windows/Linux Servers

The short story is each server profile has it's own configuration so yea... you can configure one profile one way, and the others another way.

Re: Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question

Philip Buckley-Mellor — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 23:39:37 GMT

Thanks for your help - effectively I'll have no more than about 15 VLANs coming up the trunk but I do need my ESXi boxes to have access to them all and my physicals to have access to say 3 of them.

i.e.

Physical box;

FlexNIC #1 - VLAN 100 and only 100

FlexNIC #2 - VLAN 101 and only 101

FlexNIC #3 - VLAN 102 and only 102

No other FlexNIC's

ESXi;

FlexNIC #1 - VLANs 100, 101 and 102

No other FlexNIC's

Obviously that's a very simplified version of what I'd like but would that be possible via this method? I'm still stuck in VC v2 mode at the moment but this is for a new environment and I'd really like my 'cake and eat it' if possible.

Thanks again.

Re: Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question

Steven Clementi — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 04:53:57 GMT

Easily done with a Shared Uplink Set.

Basically, the interface is totally difference (not totally, but it's been re-vamped since v2)

What's the OA Firmware at in the enclosure? You need to play close attention to the compatibility between the OA firmware and the VC Modules... as well as other devices in the enclosure like the iLo's.

I've attached some images of what the new interface looks like.

Untitled1: SUS Creation in v3.51. The major change is that pre-firmware 3.30 you needed to define each and every VLAN manually. Post 3.30, the interface allows you to specify comma delimited range of numbers and it will automatically create all of the VLAN mappings for you.

Untitled2: The Created SUS

Untitled3: The listed Created Network Profiles

Untitled4: Server Mappings, you can specify individual Ethernet Profiles to your Flexnic's

Untitled5: or you can select "Multiple Networks" (which you see in the next image) and select all/some of your Ethernet Profiles.

Untitled6: Selecting Multiple Networks

Untitled7: Just another shot with only some of the Ethernet Profiles selected for a Flexnic.

Now... why only 1 Nic (and I assume you mean 1 port form each LoM?) for ESXi?

Re: Simultaneous Mapped and Tunnelled question

Philip Buckley-Mellor — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 08:01:18 GMT

Thank you again, these will be entirely new C7k's with new OAs and VCs at whatever code level they ship with so bringing them up to the latest version on day one will be easy - it's a greenfield site essentially - retrofitting these versions to our labs may be trickier however so thanks for the heads up.

I saw your diagrams and it looks great, just what I needed thank you.

Oh and as to the single FlexNIC, well to be honest I'll probably create one for vmkernel and one for VM traffic (2GB and 8GB respectively, SAN is 8Gbps HP P10k btw), I just wanted to make my description clearer.

I'm totally happy with the VMWare side of things but I find our DB staff just aren't very VLAN/virtual-NIC aware/comfortable so thought it easer to give them their usual management/DB-access/backup NICs so at least their PXE boot and build tools will work without change - one day I'll bring them around to modern ways :)

I really appreciate your help on this, I work for one of HP's largest customers and get a great deal of help from our sales team but I was keen to hear what this community said - mostly to increase my own confidence that even though my VC knowledge is dusty (I was an early adopter) it can deliver what I need - so thank you very much indeed.