Blade p-classs GBE2 switch

[Asim_5]

i have 8 Lan ports at backend of p-class encloure named as(19,20,21,22 and 2 front 23,24)on each Switch.
Now how many ports are required to connnect if i want Nic 1 of each server to be active and bandwidth efficient for uplinks port.
As i have seen many documents and try to understand the interconnecting procedure but none of them completely satisfied me enough to have fully understand the uplink port connectivity.
Scenerio:
1.if i connect uplink port 19 of one switch backend then how many Nic will be enable on 8 servers.
2.wht if i connect first row all 19,20,21,22 then how many NICs will be enable on each server.
(Switch is on default settings)
plz help me i am in great confusion here.

[samanvya]

Eache GBe2 Switch has 16 downlink ports. Hence with default switch config . if you connect port 19 - 16 nics would be enaled depending on the number and type of blades.

Also if Both switch A & B are connected through 17 & 18 crosslinks.

So in case you have both switches connnected and envlosure completed populated then 32 nics on the server ( max )
would have external connectivity.

2 :On a switch each port can talk to all others until u configure vlan . so still the same number of nics would be enabled.


Are you using Standard or enhanced p-class enclosure ?

[Asim_5]

we are using enhanced enclosure.each Bl20pG4 has 4 Nics and both switch are crosslink with each other(downlink connection).
you said that if we connect one uplink port 19 at one at back of one side switch all 16 nics will be enabled means each server has 2 nics enabled if there are 8 servers in bay.
kindly give us more help on this.
1.which Nics will be enabled after connecting uplink port 19 one cable.
2.what the use of other ports?any bandwdith issue will come if we use only port 19.
3.whts the purpose of 2 frontend ports 23,24.

[samanvya]

BL 20p g4

Network Adapter
Five network adapters total:
Two NC373i PCI-X Gigabit Multifunction NICs (embedded) with WOL and PXE
One 10/100 iLO2 NIC dedicated to management
NOTE: Must use HP BladeSystem p-class server blade enclosure with enhanced backplane to utilize all four NIC's (281404-B22).


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So if you have two GBE2 swtiches...you can connect uplink port 19 and access all 32 nic

(4 nics * 8 servers ) through that port.

* All ports should be same vLAN

PLus the ilo port of all 8 servers get routed to integrated ilo port on management board

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Now if you further can have extra connection for redundancy..

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Or trunk them for extra Bandwidth

[Asim_5]

I have to plug only one port 19 in one switch to connect two NIC's of each server, similarly by plugging port 19 of second switch will connect other two network cards of all 8 servers. Are both of these cables will not be bottleneck as all of the 32 NIC's traffic is passing through these two cables?