P4300 G2 - Adding 10Gbe NICs on clustered appliances

[irofrank]

Hi Guys,

As a follow up to another question that I asked and got an answer to, I'd like to ask this:

I have two P4300G2s in a cluster (network RAID). I've just added the 10Gbe kits to both nodes. Now I'd like configure the 10Gbe interfaces as the primary interfaces, and disable the 1Gbe onboard ports. Question is, how do I go about it? Do I have the break the cluster? What's the proper procedure to follow to ensure I do not lose the volumes that are already on the storage?

Would appreciate any pointers on this.

Thanks.

Frank

[oikjn · Accepted solution]

I don't know, but HP MUST have a document on this.  My guess would be you convert one node at a time and you do NOT need to break the cluster.  One issue though is I think the licenses are tied to the MAC address so you may have an issue with that, but I"m sure the document on upgrading to 10G includes that information.

[a_o]

Google is your friend..

googling HP P4000 1GbE to 10GbE Migration produces:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02254831.pdf
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software11/COL31471/co-78235-1/AT022-96003.pdf

[irofrank]

Thanks for the responses. I already have the documents you've linked to, as well as other documents. The only issue is there isn't any info in those documents about my specific scenario, as I does not indicate what should be done if the nodes are in a cluster.

[irofrank]

Ok, turns out it was alot simpler than I anticipated. As oikjn pointed out, there's no need to break the cluster. Once the 10Gbe ports were activated and bonded. All I had to do was select those bonds as the SAN/iQ communication ports. Once this was done. I disable the 1Gbe ports, logged out of the managment group and logged back in, and that was it!

[Sbrown]

so how is the performance? 2gbe to 20gbe should get rid of congestion for sure! you do have flow control disabled on 10gbe ports?

I've been pondering this one - if the gigabit iscsi client chokes and the switch throws flow control on a bonded 10gbe link, it would essentially bring every one down in speed?

But if you were to take that thought and extend it to gigabit you would end up with the same conclusion.

you want P4300 to P4300 communication to be lossless but at what cost ?