Booting External Server's PXE from Blade

[ji0134]

Hi all!

I recently got my hands on a c7000 enclosure with the HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules. I have 4 ports configured as a shared uplink that goto an arista switch as a trunked port channel. There are two networks; one for external connections, and a internal vlan for cluster management, storage i/o access. 

The first one is configured with smart link and assigned to the first port of every blade, but while trying to enable smart link on the other network, it would kick in immediately and take down the ports as if there was no uplink.

My issue is while the blades PXE booted fine on the internal network; I am seeing no packets coming into my PXE hosts from my external storage servers in the same VLAN, I see them tagged with the proper vlan on the arista, but it seems the never make it to VC or past VC.

Let me know what I should post for diagnostics; thank you!

[AmRa]

Smart Link actively manages downlink states when uplinks lose link state. Each VC downlink port connects to a server NIC. If an uplink port loses link to the external switch, Virtual Connect drops all of the Ethernet downlinks in that network connected to each server NIC. This allows servers to see the downed link and to failover, if needed. This feature is useful when using certain server network teaming (bonding) configurations.

With reference to reported issue "no packets coming into my PXE hosts from my external storage servers in the same VLAN".

Please refer the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Cookbook and review your VC configuration. 

https://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c02616817-9.pdf

If VC configuration is in place or unable to isolate the issue, please raise support ticket with HPE support team as multiple logs are required  to review to isolate the issue.