Help! BL460c Blades & Networking

[Jordan Jones]

Firstly I’m a network engineer so I apologize in advance if I use all the wrong terminology. What I’m looking for actually is some better understanding of this hardware so we know how to best integrate it into our environment. We have several blade enclosures at this time and they are all set up differently which essentially smells like bad implementation to me. So what I’m trying to do is understand the product from the insight manager interface perspective.

If anyone can tell me if this is possible or not it would be most appreciated.

I hope this will make sense.

Bay 1 Server has 4 network interfaces. There is only one blade switch (2 switches)in the enclosure. Interfaces 1 & 2 are assigned to the appropriate blade switch interfaces.

The blade server has an additional dual nic installed. (interface 3) is needed to be configured as a heartbeat and the other (interface 4) for the backup network.

So the question is. Can i map these interfaces to the physical uplink ports on the front of the blade switchs.

This would allow us to accommodate the request without the need to purchase additional blade switches.



Thanks!

[Matti_Kurkela]

You did not specify your enclosure type, which turns out to be an important fact in this problem.

The "additional dual NIC" is probably installed in mezzanine slot 1 of the blade, as this would make the most sense in your configuration.

Your first blade switch module is apparently in interconnect module slot #1, as that's where the NIC 1 of each blade will connect, regardless of enclosure type. The second switch module should be at slot #2: if you have a c7000 enclosure, the NIC 2 of the blade will not function if this is not true. If you have a c3000 enclosure, the second blade switch module should be unused so far.

In a c7000 enclosure, the first mezzanine slots of each blade are wired to connect to interconnect module slots #3 and #4. This is hard wiring in the enclosure backplane: the mapping cannot be changed in any way.

In a c3000 enclosure, the internal wiring is different: all the internal NICs of each blade will connect to interconnect module slot #1. The first mezzanine slot will connect to interconnect module slot #2.

So, if you have a c7000 enclosure, the answer is definitely No: you'll need to fill the interconnect module slots #3 *and* #4 to make the NICs 3 and 4 work.

If you have a c3000 enclosure, the switch module in interconnect slot #2 will handle the additional NICs. So if I've understood your configuration correctly, the answer would be Yes.

Understanding the internal wiring of the blade enclosures is absolutely necessary when designing blade configurations. This is documented in the "Enclosure Setup and Installation Guide" of each enclosure model.

MK

[Jordan Jones]

Well this has been quite an adventure.. Thanks for the response.. You were absolutely correct. I apparently had some fantasies about the functionality of the virtual connect software.

HP support gave me c7000 enclosure 101. I understand how each nic on the blade server is hard mapped to a bay and port.