C7000 – Hyper-V – VC Flex Fabric – VLAN - FC - design questions

[techietechie]

C7000 – Hyper-V – VC Flex Fabric – VLAN - design questions
Hi HP experts
Background: I am putting together a solution – a hyper-v cluster based on 2 c7000 blade chassis and 6 BL620C servers (3 in each chassi). The chassi’s will be in 2 different server rooms on the same site – connected via 10GB fibre link for failover. Our core switches are all 1 GB, we do not yet have a 10GB Ethernet in place. The storage will be provisioned from EMC NS-480 for the hyper-v, via two fabric switches which run at 2gb , we plan to buy new switches which will give 8gb.

Questions:
1. Best Virtual Connect design

a. Two –redundant ---HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules?
Could i use this is a complete FC module or is it only 1st two blocks on VC which will allow FC communication

Or

b. May be something like HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb
And Virtual Connect 4Gb or 8GB Fibre Channel Module separately?

2. VLANs – I believe is better to pass VLAN’s separately a(access mode) to the virtual connects and then create 4-5 Vnets ---- than using the Trunking approach – some whitepapers are following the approach though – is it better?? To go that way.

3. Can you please shed some more light on overall networking and storage config for the virtual connect for the design above.

I don’t want it to be an overkill at the same time don’t want it to underperform, hence jus would like to sanity check my thoughts ....
Thanks

[techietechie]

just another quick one, for Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules

what kind of connections can be used to connect to the core switch? (cat5, fibre channel cables) please detail. thanks

[cjb_1]

Hi Techie

Do you have access to the HP Product Bulletin?
At the stage you are at this would be an ideal source of info. The flexfabric module page lists all the supported configs and defines what modules the server need.

For what it is worth, I'd look at option b. Tried and trusted. Sure others would disagree.

[Steven McLean]

Questions:
1. Best Virtual Connect design

a. Two â redundant ---HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Modules?
Could i use this is a complete FC module or is it only 1st two blocks on VC which will allow FC communication
(Steve) Ports X1-X4 can be used for FC connections.

Or

b. May be something like HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb
And Virtual Connect 4Gb or 8GB Fibre Channel Module separately?
(Steve) If you don't need the extra bandwidth or ports, a FlexFabric solution will be less expensive (then Flex-10 and VC-FC) and provide better flexibility.

2. VLANs â I believe is better to pass VLANâ s separately a(access mode) to the virtual connects and then create 4-5 Vnets ---- than using the Trunking approach â some whitepapers are following the approach though â is it better?? To go that way.
(Steve) Depends on teh number of VLANs and how you want to connect them. I would start with a Shared Uplink Set and trunk ALL vlans to the FF modules.

3. Can you please shed some more light on overall networking and storage config for the virtual connect for the design above.
(Steve) too broad of a question and not all the info is provided.

But.... with what's here, assuming a single SAN and only 5 VLANs, take a look at the FlexFabric Cookbook - http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02616817/c02616817.pdf Scenario 4, page 69. Understand though that scenario uses a BL460c with only 2 NIcs, the BL620c has 4 NICs (two connected to each Bays 1 and 2).

Enjoy...