DAC Cable Between HP Procurve 5412 and HP Commware 5120

[aali]

I have a customer recently purchased HP Procurve 5412 and HP Commware A5120 series switches.  The question is they would like to interconnect 5412 with 5120 over a 10GbE link.  Instead of going with SFP+ transceiver, I was thinking of using a DAC cable.  Is there a specific DAC cable that can support two different series switches one is Procurve and the other one is CommWare.

Regards,

[Peter_Debruyne]

should be simple question, but HP has not really clarified this (IMHO).

I often use the online HP Configurator to verify which components/modules are allowed/supported in which platform.

You need IE (activeX) for this:

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/tw/en/products/configurator/index.aspx

When you add a switch with modules (like 5400 - add some sfp+ zl module), under the Configuration Properties dropdown list you can select the module and select for each port the possible gbics etc.

I did the connector test with IRIS (for HP Partners only) between 5400 with SFP+ module to a 5120 with the SFP+ module, and IRIS reported no valid DAC cable for that scenario ... (IRIS is typically quite complete and correct).

So this would make me believe there is no officially supported HP DAC cable between the 2 models.

ProCurve (E-series) is very strict on SFP+/GBICs, so only official ones will come online, while comware switches will report in the log file that it is a non-supported connection, but it operates fine (just do not call HP support if you have this message).

This means that if you buy the ProCurve DAC cable to link them the link will be up between the 2 switches, but probably unsupported. If you would buy the Comware DAC cable, the link will probably not even come up (on the 5400 side).

To be sure, please contact HP (directly or via partner, whatever your existing relation is) and get their statement.

This is why fiber is still often used, just to overcome multi-vendor connections.

Best regards,Peter.

[aali]

Peter,

Thanks for you detailed explanation.  I also used IRIS before sent my request to the forum, and it did report invalid, however, I called HP SA and he did say that if you were to order to DAC cable from Procruve side then it will work with between Provision and Commware switches.  X242 series.  

I will run IRIS config as well with him.

[Richard Litchfield]

The only DACs that will work with ProCurve switches are ProCurve DACs. Comware/H3C or any other optic or DAC will NOT work in ProCurve.

In the Comware switches, all DACs/optics work. You will get a message saying that a non-H3C item is not supported, but it definitely does work (I have connected many of them with ProCurve DACs, including ProCurve-Comware and Comware-Comware.

If you want to get really pedantic, the only officially supported way to link disparate system/vendor types is with fibre, and each end has the relevant optic. But that is typically 10x the price or more, so DACs get used for up o 15m!