Difficulty setting up network on HP c3000 (Shorty)

[Greg Corlett]

I am trying to setup networking on a HP c3000 bladeserver enclosure. It has (3) BL465c G5 blades (Dual dual core 2.2Ghz Opterons, 16 GB RAM, NC326m Dual Port 1 GB Eth. card, QLogic QMH2462 4GB FC card) with (2) Cisco Catalyst Blades 3020 blades switches and (2) Brocade 4/12 SAN switches connected to a HP MSA 2000fc SAN with 12 300GB SAS drives. I have configured the Ciscos with five VLANs but the only network that I can connect to is the VLAN1 that I use for management. I have installed VMWare ESX server v3.5 on the blade in bay 1 but can only get it to see the management VLAN1 only. I am trying to setup two Cisco 3020's, one as a primary and the second one as a secondary switch for redundancy. This is my first try with blade servers and ESX server and I have been struggling with the networking for months. I have had two HP engineers here several times but this is not getting resolved. Bought the equipment in 6/08 and still have not got it up and going because of the networking. Any help or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Steven Clementi]

First things first Greg...

You have a nice amount of hardware there and it should treat you nicely. The C3000 and blades that go with it are being used EVERYWHERE for virtualization. ;o)

That being said.. let's get some info...

How are your Cisco 3020's connected to your existing network? (Assuming you are installing this into an existing infrastructure).

How is your ESX server configured, networking wise? Can you supply a screenshot of the Networking screen in the VI Client?

Can you post diagram of how things are connected?


Steven

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello Greg,

NIC 1 and NIC 2 are both connectet to interconnect bay 1, mezzanine port 1 is connectet to interconnect bay 2. Mezzanine port 2 is connectet to bay 3 and 4. It's a little bit tricky. So the fc-switches should be in bay 3 and 4, the Qlogic HBAs on mezzanine 2. On mezzanine 2 should be a additional NIC.

The switch ports of the cisco switch must be set to "trunk" with all VLANs that you want to use in the ESX farm. If the IP of the service console is in another VLAN, you need to set an VLAN ID for the service console port group. After that, you should reach the service console in the correct VLAN. If you setup NO vlan IDs for the service console port group, or other port groups, you only get the management VLAN - VLAN 1.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Patrick

[Greg Corlett]

Thank you for your replies. I am in the process of getting some detailed information (config files and network layout) up on the forum so that it will be more understandable of what I am trying to do. Again, thank you for your suggestions and ideas. I appreciate it.