What is advantage of MAC address control which VC gives you?

[markh1289]

Hi, What is advantage of MAC address control which VC gives you? From a networking perspective, I thought ARP with possibly the odd gratuitous ARP thown in would solve all network issues associated with a blade server change (eg. due to hardware failure) but I must be missing something. Regards, MH

[quksilver]

Off the top of my head, DHCP reservations and port security are tied to MAC addresses on the networking side, and zoning on the SAN side is tied to the WWN. Perhaps your organization is different, but at mine, different teams are responsible for each of those pieces and getting all of them to update their systems could easily take a week.

[markh1289]

Hi quksilver, Thanks very much - makes sense. I was also wondering if PXE relies on specifiy MAC addresses? Regards, MH

[mattsn]

IIRC, the server blade "adopts" the VC assigned MAC address and uses it instead of the "physical" MAC address. That way, anything relying on the MAC address will work, even if you change to another blade. Same goes for SAN and WWN. Rgds, Matts