Blade servers

[Didier Pironet]

Hi,
I'm running a blade enclosure with 8 bl20pg2 blades and patch panels (no interconnects)

The issue is that I have to physicaly move the network cable to patch panel A to enable PXE but once the OS has boot up I have to put it back on patch panel B which is the default location BTW...

Is this a normal behavior with G2 (with G1 no such problem) ?

Thx for help on this.
Didier

[Roy Main]

Hmm... I wouldn't *expect* that to be the normal behavior.

I thought PXE was enabled on all the nics - but maybe not. Check the User Guide.

The routing of the ports is: iLO and 1 nic go to Side A. The other 2 nics go to Side B. On the switches there is a redundant path so you can always get to your blades when one of the switches is down. I don't know if this is true for the patch panels.

regards,
roy

[Didier Pironet]

Hi Roy, thx for the answers...
Actually, we can't enable PXE on several NICs, just one at a time...

From what we've noticed here with G2 and patch panels, NIC1 and iLO go to side B and NIC2 and 3 go to side A.
And actually, in the OS, NIC1, 2 and 3 are working fine this way.

But once you need to boot up the server with PXE, we have to swap NIC1 on side B with NIC3 on side A.

Could you point me out some documents about setting blade, with G2 and patch panels ?

Cheers,
Didier

[Roy Main]

You need to download the ProLiant Blade p-Class System Setup and Installation Guide. This is at hp.com. Look at the support & drivers link and then choose servers. Choose the Blade servers and then look for the link for manuals.

The features list says that the three nics support PXE - however, in Chapter 2 of the guide the chart for the nics is a follows:

Side A: NIC1 - data & PXE NIC2 - data
Side B: NIC3 - data & NIC4 iLO

This explains why you must be connected to Side A for pxe. You should also be able to use that port for a standard ethernet data connection as well.

regards,
roy

[Didier Pironet]

Hi Roy,
I found a document but it seems imcomplete or I'm missing something here...

The doucment :
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/papers/5982-2202en_rev2_us.pdf

Look at page #7, Figure #6. You have B1, B2, A3 and A4.

Is NIC#1=A3, NIC#2=A4 and NIC#3=B2 ?

Cheers,
Didier