Superdome 2, Pass-thru module and APA configuration

[Stijn Adriaensens]

All, 

We have a configuration where an HP Superdome 2 is connected to the network by 5 interfaces. These five interfaces (from different blades) pass through a Pass-Thru module. 

We would like to apply port channeling (APA) on these 5 interfaces, two by two. Example, interface 0 from blade 0, connected to interconnect 0 + interface 1 from blade 1, connected to interconnect 1. The other channel is interface 0 from blade 2, connected to interconnect 0 + interface 1 from blade 3, connected to interconnect 1. 

It's a bit confusing, but what we want to know if it is possible to mix interconnects and blades in an APA configuration, or do we need to select interfaces from the same blade, or from the same interconnect module to join. Is it even possible to apply APA MAC based port channelling when using interconnect modules?

The interconnect modules is supposed to be transparent and hard-wired, but there are some configuration options (speed, auto-neg...). What does the switch on the other side see, the MAC addresses from the interconnect module, or the MAC addresses from the blades?

Thanks for your time..

Stijn

[Torsten. · Accepted solution]

As long as the NICs are the same model and speed, you can group them. Setting must be autoneg, be aware: the 1gb/s PT module can only do 1Gb/s!

[Stijn Adriaensens]

Ok, thanks for the confirmation. Luckily we have the 10Gbe Pass-Thru module. I was expecting this to be a problem, but we'll have to continue looking into it then...

[Torsten.]

Several weeks ago I configured 6 servers with APA. I hit a problem. After I configured all servers from CLI, everything was working. Then I rebooted the first server - all settings were gone! The config files were empty! The I went to the web smh page, saved the global settings, configured APA from cli again - problem solved. The missing global settings were the problem. You say "save settings", the system says "ok, done", but nothing was done!