Discussing the new OA DDR-2 and iLO2/iLO3 connectivity benefits

[chuckk281]

Oliver had a question regarding the latest iLO3 interface speed:

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I believe that the old OA used an internal 100Mb switch to connect the iLO2 interface of each blade server. So we had 100Mb connectivity to each iLO2 interface. The new OA (DDR-2) has a 1Gb uplink.

Question:

1. Does the new OA use an internal 1Gb switch to connect to the iLO2 interfaces?  

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We had responses from Monty & Hiro

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Hiro: 

iLO2/iLO3 and OA are connected at 100Mbps because both iLO2 and iLO3 have only 10/100Mpbs interface.

Monty: 

The original c7000 and c3000 OA modules had 100Mb NIC connections to the internal 100Mb switch to iLO and interconnects and the external Management Port.

The new c7000 OA with KVM and DDR2 and the new c3000 DDR2 OA modules have two 1Gb NIC connections – one to the 100Mb internal switch to the iLO and interconnects and the other to the external Management Port.

Then Oliver asked: 

Excellent, so we stay with 100 Mb to the iLO interface. But do we benefit of the 1Gb OA interface with regards to iLO functionality? My customer complains that iLO does not perform very well if you have many concurrent sessions to different blades. Now we come up with new iLO3 and better virtual media performs. Will we get the performance of iLO3 or is there any limiting factor?

Monty responded: 

We do see improvement in iLO 3 virtual media performance.

Since all traffic into the enclosure goes through OA firmware, this is the reason that multiple iLO media sessions is slower than a single session.

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