Blade C7000 with Cisco 3020 Switch

[Stewart P]

Hi,

I have a C7000 Blade system with 2xCisco 3020's in the back. I am using 6 servers at the moment. All is OK except my servers here sometimes become less responsive in times of heavy traffic.

On looking at my Blade, I appear to only have one port enabled on each switch. If I go into the config, it says the port is enabled, but in the dashboard it says the others are disabled.

If I reboot the switch, its not necessarilt the same one that comes up, but one always does - but only one.

Have I missed some config here - and is this a problem. If I am understandint his right, I will have a 1GB link from each switch. 2GB to my 18 servers is not alot!

As you can see Im new to Blades!

Anyone out there give me a few tip?

Thanks in advance

[JKytsi]

Here is the link to installation guides page.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/316682-0-0-0-121.html

And You can get up to 8 uplinks per switch, so 16 Gbs uplink bandwith is available.

[Lmm_1 · Accepted solution]

Are you reffering to uplink ports? if so it might be due STP, you can use all available bandwidht but you´ll need to use Cisco Etherchannel or LACP, otherwise you will create a loop, therefore STP will block the ports.

rgds,

[Stewart P]

Of course! Spanning Tree will be blocking the ports! Thanks for that!

Now, can I be so cheeky to ask advice on what I do about it?

I have all the ports plugged into 1 of 2 HP 54xx switches (with spanning tree turned on). What would you suggest as the best route forward? Trunking?

And I am not very literate with Cisco, only HP.....but any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Lmm_1]

Hello,
Yes, Trunk will be the best option.

HP Trunk = Cisco Etherchannel


On the cisco side, It should look like below:

Switch# configure terminal
Switch(config)# interface range igabitethernet0/17 - 22
Switch(config-if-range)# switchport mode access
Switch(config-if-range)# switchport access vlan 10
Switch(config-if-range)# channel-group 5 mode on
Switch(config-if-range)# end

Procurve usage:

trunk [ethernet] PORT-LIST

[trunk|lacp]
no trunk [ethernet] PORT-LIST

Do you need all your servers on vlan1??? if there is more that 1, then configure IEEE 802.1q on those ports.

rgds,
lmm

[Stewart P]

Thanks very much again, I will try that.

All my servers are going to the same VLAN (300) yes, so that should be OK. If I leave them on VLAN 1 in the switch config, that should be OK shouldnt it? As my switch ports are untagged to that VLAN anyway.

Thanks very much for your help in the meantime,

Regards

[Lmm_1]

Those ports should be regular access ports for vlan 300, no tagging needed.

rgds,
lmm

[Stewart P]

Thanks, I'll give that a try next time Im on site..