MES with Flex-10 Base and Flex-10/10D imported would it be supported?

[chuckk281]

A question about Multi-Enclosure Stacking (MES) from Christy:

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Hi All

               I have a customer who wishes to incorporate a new chassis containing Flex-10/10D’s into an existing VC domain which contains Flex-10 modules

I have gone through various documents and have come across the point below on P.10 taken from the HP virtual connect for C class setup and installation guide ver 4.30

http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c04383984-3.pdf

All enclosures must have the same FC, FlexFabric, or Flex-10/10D module configuration.

For example, if bays 1 and 2 of the Primary Enclosure contain FlexFabric-20/40 F8 modules, then bays

1 and 2 of Remote Enclosures 1, 2, and 3 must also contain FlexFabric-20/40 F8 modules.

Q. Am I correct in the understanding that a MES must contain the same VC Eth, Flexfabric and FC interconnects across all the chassis within the MES?

Q. Are there any exceptions to this rule?

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Reply from Dan:

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You are correct Christy, you can NOT stack 10D and 10 in a Multi Chassis Stack where the 10 and 10D are in different enclosures in the same location (Bay 1 and 2 for instance)

This is because the 10D is seen as a Hybrid Eth/FC module even though in the GUI it only says Eth.

Since we no longer sell the original Flex-10, any new chassis order has to match the existing chassis module for module.

The only exception being the dedicated FC modules can be mixed a little between 20 and 24 ports if I remember correctly.

So they either need to purchase Flex-10s from old stock somewhere, or migrate the other enclosures in the domain to 10D modules before adding in the new chassis.

Now, If they only need a few VLANs to be accessible between the enclosures @ 10Gb and those VLANs don’t need to exist anywhere outside the enclosures, there is a way to connect 2 different VC Domains together and have blades on both sides talk.  This is often good enough for vMotion or Oracle RAC as long as all the cluster members are in one of the 2 VC Domains.

But because we don’t allow VLANs to go in uplink A and then back out Uplink B, again, this VLAN/these VLANs would only exist inside each chassis.

All you need to do is wire them together and then configure a Network/SUS on each side to these interconnected ports.  And then change the Failover mode from Auto to Manual to each side knows which is the primary path.  If you want more than 1 VLAN to ride this connection, you make both sides an SUS instead of a simple vNetwork.  You will then have to figure our what VLAN Numbers to assign to each.  I recommend having the network team give you some high numbered ones (3001, 3002, 3003, etc) and mark them off as used in whatever tracking tool they use to make sure there is no future conflict.

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