Enclosue links over network?

[Bengt Bergholm]

The enclosure up-/downlink ports, are they running standard Ethernet or some proprietary communications protocol? We have 4 enclosures, 2 in one computer room and 2 in the other.

They are more than 100m apart so I was thinking about the possibility to connect the downlink port to a switch/VLAN in one room and the uplink port to the same VLAN in the other room. Would this work?

[WFHC-WI]

It uses standard Ethernet. If there were a proprietary protocol then you would need to install that onto a client PC attached to this enclosure uplink / service port. That's not the case. You should be able to route it without issue.

Good luck!

[rick jones]

I don't know much about the up/downlink ports - especially what sort of traffic is run over them, but "route" has a rather specific meaning in networking suggesting routers and separate IP subnets. Did you perhaps mean "bridge" instead?

[WFHC-WI]

Good point.

Rather than Ethernet I should have said TCP/IP. This is what lends me to believe the traffic is indeed routable. The port is 100BaseT Ethernet and runs with an address in the 169.254.x.y/16 (autoconfig) network.

Ideally you should configure the switch ports you're connecting to with a specific VLAN covering the addresses above to ensure the most streamlined connectivity. On this document:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00705292/c00705292.pdf

Page 208, "Using the service port connection", the first three paragraphs apply.

Good luck!

[Adrian Clint]

Bengt...
This may sound a silly question...but why do you want to connect them together?

Is opening two browsers an issue?

HP recommend that you link the enclosures in the same or adjacent racks. Surely you have the enclosures in different locations for a reason... so proceedure wise is it not better to manage them as separate locations?

[Migrationsverket]

All,

Thanks for the input. I also sent the question to HP support and their 2nd line guys just said "not supported" and "no comments" on if it would be feasible at least in theory :)

As for why, well, opening 2 browsers and doing 2 logins when you can do only one to get an overview of the whole environemt is a good enough reason for me. The number of enclosures here is going to increase over time. As well as the challenge to see if it could work, hey I'm a g33k ;)

[rick jones]

Nothing wrong with being a G33k - just remember the distinction in HPSpeak between "works" and "supported"

Supported, known to work -> warm fuzzies all around
Supported, not known to not work -> an HPite may be in trouble
Supported, known to not work -> an HPite is in trouble
Unsupported, known to work -> lucky today, unlucky tomorrow?
Unsupported, not known to not work -> there but for the grace of Turing
Unsupported, known to not work -> no, it was not deliberate ;-)

[WFHC-WI]

Nice evaluation Rick!

I say go for it, at the very worst you'll have to unplug some cabling...