Virtual Connect Manager Question

[chuckk281]

Ed had a customer upgrade question:

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I need help verifying a statement found in the HP VC Installation Guides .

My partner's customer,  has a C7000 they bought ~ a year ago (could be a bit more).  At the time the 1/10 F VC modules were their standard, as FLEX-10 was new and FlexFabric not even out.  VCM was setup using the 1/10F’s.  They did purchase a pair of Flex-10’s in that Chassis to get familiar with them – so the chassis has the following

1/10F in Bay 1 &2;

8/24c in Bay 3&4 (I believe);

FLEX-10 in Bay5 & 6;

And I beleive 1/10F in Bay 7 & 8 if they can figure this all out..

They now want to interconnect (2) C7000’s into a 2-chassis Domain, and they want minimal downtime.  They don’t want to reconfigure the Domain by swapping FLEX-10’s into Bay 1 & 2 of the older Chassis – too disruptive for Prod servers.  They hoped to create this Multi-chassis domain running the 1/10F in Bay 1 & 2.  The newer of the Chassis I believe has Flex-10’s?   

Initially, under 3.15 (ish) they had setup VCM with 1/10F inbay 1 and Bay 2.  We assume that the 1/10F in Bay1 and Bay 2 is the master interface for the VCM?  They swear that the Flex-10 in Bay 5 is the VCM master, but Brian says that is not possible.  Please confirm?

We need to verify the following:

1.       Is this definitively correct?  If so we may need to settle on 3.18 if that will allow the (16) full-height BL685 G5’s to operate properly and keep the Domain networking setup intact?  Since the C7000s are full, there are no worries about needing 3.30 later on because there is no room to put in newer Blades. Does 3.18 sound like a workable compromise if they don’t want to rebuild the domain?

2.       If it is correct, when did this change come about?  At 3.30?  We need to explain when and why it occurred, because the customer says that it is “not acceptable” for this to change within a year – so we have a potentially combative situation.

3.       The end result will be a 2 x C7000 Domain, and each C7000 has (8) interconnects so the complexity is high.  Customer is looking for all the options available to proceed with this upgrade.

1. The two enclosures are already stacked.

2. There are currently 6 VC modules installed in the following order:

Bay 1 and 2 - VC 1/10 F modules

Bay 3 and 4 VC 8 /24 FC Modules

Bay 5 and 6 VC Flex 10

They intend to add VC Flex 10 in Bay 7 and 8 after the upgrade of VC from version 3.15 to latest 3.60 if possible.

The issue is that as of VC User Guide version 3.30 there is a statement under the multi enclosure section that in a mixed configuration of VC 1/10g F and Flex 10 or Flex Fabric. The VC 1/10G F modules cannot be the manager. I looked at the user guide for VC 3.15 and the statement is not there. I did not get a chance to find v3.16, 3.17 or 3.18 user guide to see when that statement was released.

Our concerns are, will we be able to upgrade the VC to 3.60 without having to change the current physical config, if not what will be the lowest supported VC version for this config. Reason is my understanding is if we need to change the config this will require a complete redo of the VC domain will significant down time.

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Reply from Jim:

Virtual Connect V 3.10 removed the VCM requirement for Primary/Secondary VC interconnect modules to be placed in I/O bays 1 and 2.

See release notes:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=vcm%20bay%201%20and%202%20only&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CFIQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport2.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs%2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc02523900%2Fc02523900.pdf&ei=5dIOUMeuNsSYiALTouHMCQ&usg=AFQjCNEtz1USLFcX9wRH4Nysiv25yUgfYg

And from Chris;

Starting with VC 3.10, VCM wasn't limited to Bays 1 & 2.  If you installed any module into any other bays, and create a domain.  So, they very well can have VCM running in bays 5 & 6.

Even if VCM is running in Bays 1 & 2, MES does support the 1/10F modules in the Base Enclosure.  This is all documented in the User Guide and the MES Whitepaper.  I'm also not aware of any CA stating VC 1/10F modules can't be used as the Primary modules with 3.30 firmware.

Do know that 3.60 will be the very last supported firmware for the 1/10F modules.  Any future version of firmware will not be supported, even though they will have a mixture of modules.  They will need to plan accordingly to either replace the 1/10F modules, or migrate to new enclosures with current generation VC modules.

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Comments or questions?