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vc and blade port mappings

 
Jonathan Paul_1
Occasional Advisor

vc and blade port mappings

Hi, I need some help on understanding the vc-enet and port mappings. I have 4 bl680c g5's with 6 nic ports (4 built in and 2 from 1 mezz. card). IC bays have 4 1/10gb vc-enet modules and 2 4gb fc modules.

For simplicity sake so I can understand how things should be layed out and how things are mapped, lets say I want all nic ports to be on a single test network.

To do this I would create a single vc-enet network and assign how many ports ? 24 because I have 4 blades with six nics or all 32 ports available on the vc ethernet modules ?

Then when I create a server profile and in the Ethernet Network Conections section, I would assign 6 ports (since there are six on each blade, I should get a MAC address here ??) and assign them all to the network created previously, is this correct ? I would then need create a profile for each blade.

I know this situation might not realistic, but I am just trying to get an understanding of what is mapped where before I add in vlans etc. I seem to keep confusing the internal port mappings and those don't seem to matter if the modules are stacked.
7 REPLIES 7
JKytsi
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

When You create a network, You don't assign ports facing to blades. You add your uplinks to network. And that depends how many connections you have from vc to your LAN.

yes, You need to create a server profile and create 6 NICs to the profile and assign your created network to these NICs. You get MAC addresses then. There is a wizard for creating a profiles to all blades or You can create a profile template.

There is a excellent document available called VC ethernet networking cookbook
Remember to give Kudos to answers! (click the KUDOS star)

You can find me from Twitter @JKytsi
JKytsi
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

And You should really to start assigning points to answers that help You. You have been member since 2005 and 0 points assigned to answers.
Remember to give Kudos to answers! (click the KUDOS star)

You can find me from Twitter @JKytsi
The Brit
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

Jonathan,
As mentioned by Jarkko, you need to separate your thinking between "UpLinks" which go from the VC module to the external network, and "DownLinks" which are hard wired between the server blades and the VC modules.

Looking first at the DOWNLINKS, you need to really understand that hard-wired means HARD-WIRED. i.e. the paths from the onboard NICs and Mezz cards to the Interconnect modules, are pre-ordained, and are completely beyond your control. The ports on the motherboard, and the ports on the Mezz cards map to specific InterConnect modules, and there is nothing you can do about that.

The only control that you have is in the types and locations of the Mezz Cards, and the types and locations of the IC modules.

The "type" of mezz card (i.e. HBA or NIC) must be consistent with the "type" of IC module at the other end of the "hard-wired" path, i.e. an HBA needs to connect to a FC module of some type, etc.

The mapping of these paths between blades and IC modules is not TOO complicated, (see attachment)

For the external communication, you should create Ethernet Networks (vLans) within VC. You can then, if you wish, create uplink sets (trunks) between your VC modules and the external switch. The VC vLANs are then assigned to the uplink sets.

when you create a server profile, it will only show 2 ethernet ports (bear in mind that these are ports looking inward to the server), however additional ports can be added up to the maximum that you have available. If you have additional NICs on Mezz ports, then provided that they are mapped to an VCEnet module then VC is smart enought the recognise that, it doesnt matter which Mezz slot/IC module combo you are using.

IMPORTANT POINT There is an important consideration regarding how you locate your IC modules. Once you settle on a scheme for where the IC module types are going to be installed, then you effectively force all of the blades to install HBA's and additional NICs ON THE SAME Mezz slots (because the mappings are hard-wired). If you are mixing FULL height and HALF height blades in an enclosure (or expect to in the future), then this needs additional thought because you need to ensure that half heights NICs also map to ENet modules and HBA's map to FC modules. (Believe me, changing the configuration of your MEZZ cards and IC modules later in the game is a real pain in the patoot.)

HTH

Dave
The Brit
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

Dropped the attachment. Here it is!

DAve
Jonathan Paul_1
Occasional Advisor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

Thanks for the replies, points assigned. Yes, I was not thinking about the "uplinks" and "downlinks" in the correct way.

For some reason I was thinking that when I assigned the six ports to the server profile, I had to assign those six ports to the vc-enet network also in some way.

I have the vc cookbook document and used it to get one of my blades online etc.

Are there any guidelines/suggestions on how many uplinks to use or anything like that. We have a pretty simple network design with only a couple vlans.
Emil Velez
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

Good comments from previous people

Consider the 2 day Virtual Connect course

http://www.hp.com/education

see the proliant curriculum and see the HF837 course. IT is available in a remote format with labs on equipment.

Adrian Clint
Honored Contributor

Re: vc and blade port mappings

Recommendation:
Join the Virtual Connect interest group
https://h30340.leveragesoftware.com/

Also there is physical layout doc thats a bit better than most you see (attached)

There are no best practices for virtual connect networking designs... (other than cookbook scenarios) as there are two many options. Imagine that a VC network is a physical hub and that connecting VC networks to blades is like phyiscally cabling NICs to HUBs (downlinks) or switches to hubs (uplinks) ... then you start to plan that way.

The best rule is about LACP 803.2ad groups. Make sure the Switch end is setup correctly for these and VC is set to auto. Then you get full bandwith. Otherwise you get inactive ports when you probably planned for active ones.