Virtual Connect and Nic Teaming HPUX 11.31 VSE OE

[dennis_122]

Using Flex-10 VC... What is the recommended teaming or failover approach at the host side. i.e. BL860c i2? Active/Active or Active/Standby?

[The Brit · Accepted solution]

Hi Dennis,
Im not a 'nix guy, but the NIC teaming setup is fairly standard, and only varies by OS.

The thing that needs to be fully understood is that your blade (if I recall correctly) has 4x10Gb Onboard NIC Ports, (LOM's). Each of these can be split into 4 virtual NICs, giving a total of 16 virtual NICs. From a physical perspective you need to understand that 'physical' ports 1 and 3 and HARDWIRED to Interconnect Bay 1, and physical ports 2 and 4 are HARDWIRED to Interconnect bay 2.

So

Physical Port 1 (virtual NICs 1a - 1d) map to IC Bay 1
Physical Port 2 (virtual NICs 2a - 2d) map to IC Bay 2
Physical Port 3 (virtual NICs 3a - 3d) map to IC Bay 1
Physical Port 4 (virtual NICs 4a - 4d) map to IC Bay 2

So for teaming always map a vNIC from an odd-numbered port to a vNIC on an even-numbered port. i.e.

Do not team odd - odd, or even - even.

Active/Active or Active/StandBy are OS options in some cases. (Active/Active is not available on my OS so it is a decision I dont have to make)

HTH

Dave.

[dennis_122]

Ok Great thanks for that information. I will use it in my deployment consideration. Can you help me with the OS side of it? Specifically in regards at the HOST OS layer. In HPUX 11.31 VSE OE... What is the recommended Teaming at this level?

[The Brit]

Sorry Man, (I'm an OpenVMS Guy.)

There is an HPUX forum somewhere around here where I'm sure you can get the help you need.

Dave.

[dennis_122]

Do you know where that forum maybe.....? Anyone?

[The Brit]

Try this one.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-UX/ct-p/itrc-117

Dave.

[cjb_1]

Hi

When you create your vc network you just need to be aware of the mappings described above.

Create a vc network with two 'resilient' ports. We use active-standby. Check the smart link button.

Publish this network to 2 ports at the host server end and apa these.

Create a vnet using the apa'd lan which you may assign to your guests.

Be aware (on v 4.1) we had issues with hpvm when losing resilience in these nets (during frimware updates). Losing both networks required us to restart the hpvm daemon (which meant the guests had to be stopped first). I haven't tested this on v4.3 but will do when i do the upgrade work later this year.