Recommendations for networking multiple enclosures?

[Jon Casimir]

We currently have two P-Class chassis's with FGBE2 Switches... we're looking to double to four of them... we were looking for a White Paper on the HP recommended method to network them, but all they have online are the recommendations for a single enclosure into a Cisco Environment... I'd like to take that basic setup, but extend it to more than one enclosure... anyone know of such a document?

Thanks,
Jon

[HEM_2]

Jon:

HP does not have a document like that because it is not really a best practice if I understand what you are trying to do.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you are looking to daisy-chain multiple enclosures together and then have a connection from one of the enclosures to the Cisco infrastructure.

What this does is effectively reduce the available bandwidth to the enclosures. For example, if I have 4 enclosures connected to each other and then link in to the Cisco infrastructure, all 4 enclosures will be sharing the bandwidth of the link in to the rest of the network.

It is better to have each enclosure uplink separately to the Cisco infrastructure so that they don't have to share bandwidth.

Now as far as redundant links between enclosures, there would be no problem setting that up assuming spanning tree is running in your environment but your best bet is separately uplinking each enclosure to your infrastructure unless there is a specific reason not to do so.

[Jon Casimir]

Thanks HEM... I definitely understand the reasoning, but bandwidth for us at the moment really isn't a problem, but I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks,
Jon