Intelligent Networking Pack needed or not

[Carsten Reinhard]

Hi,

we want to connect our bl25p-blades redundant to our network core, which consists of two 5308xl-switches. Therefore we would like to connect two network ports to each core switch. Because we have a lot of loops in the network for fault tolerance, we have STP enabled.

Question: Do we have to license the intelligent networking pack for each blade to have load sharing on the two ports connected to one core and path failover when one of the core switches fails?

[Sergej Gurenko]

It is depends on what kind of load sharing do you need (upstream or downstream)

Here is 2 days old tread with the same question.
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1016319

[Carsten Reinhard]

Hi Sergej,

thank you for your answer. Though I read the pdf, the thing is not clear for me.

First of all, what's the difference between the both types of load sharing (upstream/downstream)? What kind of load sharing will I have without using the INP?

If I understand the pdf correct, with the INP I will have one Team, with one IP and a bandwith of 4 Gbit/s. What will I have, when I do not use the INP, still define one Team with one IP and connect the blades with these settings to two different switches?

[Matt Hobbs · Accepted solution]

Without INP, you could have 2 seperate 802.3ad teams, one going to each switch. The disadvantage of this is that you need to also configure 2 IP addresses, one for each team. As per the PDF, you can lose connectivity for any clients that were going to the team that failed.

Alternatively, you can create single team and use either NFT or TLB. This will give you reliable failover and in the case of TLB, a degree of load balancing.

For your situation purchasing the INP would enable you to get the most out of your investment by allowing Dynamic Dual Channel.

The link below has some more great whitepapers on the ProLiant NIC teaming:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/whitepapers.html

[Carsten Reinhard]

Thanks Matt, this link answered all my questions (and more).