User manual HP PROLIANT BL P-CLASS GBE2 INTERCONNECT SWITCHES PROLIANT BL P-CLASS GBE2 INTERCONNECT SWITCH OVERVIEW WHITE PAPER

[. . . ] This white paper provides an overview of the second generation Gigabit Ethernet (GbE2) Interconnect Kit options for the ProLiant BL p-Class system. Each GbE2 Interconnect Kit includes a pair of industrystandard Ethernet switches that dramatically reduce the number of Ethernet network cables attached to the rear of the ProLiant BL p-Class server blade enclosure. When the GbE2 Interconnect Kit is used with the optional GbE2 Storage Connectivity Kit, it also provides pass-through of Fibre Channel signals from the ProLiant BL20p G2 server blade. The intended audience for this paper includes engineers and system administrators familiar with the overall network design of the ProLiant BL p-Class system. [. . . ] The server blade(s) with BIG-IP installed may perform load balancing on blade servers that reside in the same or different server blade enclosures, both e-Class and p-Class. The blade servers may be located anywhere on the network as long as load balanced traffic to and from the servers pass through the BIG-IP Blade Controller. For load balancing exterior to the server blade enclosure, a third party layer 7 Ethernet switch or network load balancing appliance may be used. This traditional approach uses a multi-tiered architecture where the interconnect switches are connected to one or more layer 7 switches or network load balancing appliances. Layer 7 switches and network load balancing appliances are available from several network vendors including Cisco, F5, Nortel, and others. This solution is supported on both e-Class and p-Class configured with any interconnect kit. The GbE2 Interconnect Kits are fully supported in the p-Class sever blade enclosure with any combination of ProLiant BL20p, BL20p G2, and BL40p server blades. Users can upgrade to the GbE2 Interconnect Kit from existing RJ-45 Patch Panel, RJ-45 Patch Panel 2, and GbE Interconnect Kits without powering down the server blade enclosure or server blades. If users upgrade from the GbE Interconnect Kit, one GbE Interconnect Switch may be replaced at a time while the other switch remains operational. This allows critical network resources to be transferred from one switch to the other. Therefore, both Ethernet LAN signal consolidation and Fibre Channel SAN signal pass-through is now possible with a single interconnect. the GbE2 Interconnect Switch chassis is simply used as a carrier to pass-through the Fibre Channel signals. The Ethernet LAN and the Fibre Channel SAN signals are completely isolated from each other even though they share the common GbE2 chassis. the GbE2 Storage Connectivity Kit provides components for one p-Class server blade enclosure. A web browser-based interface (BBI) and a command line interface (CLI) with scripting capability are pre-installed in the switch firmware to configure, manage, and monitor the interconnect switch. the interconnect switch also supports Telnet access and simple network management protocol (SNMP). Any combination of the downlinks, crosslinks, and external ports can be disabled, enabled, configured, and monitored on a per port basis. Out-of-band and in-band access to the switch management interfaces are supported locally and remotely from anywhere on the network. Administration of both GbE2 Interconnect Switches is possible through any uplink port, the serial port, or the two 10/100/1000T ports conveniently located on the front panel of each switch (Figure 7). 40 or greater (RDP for Windows) introduces a new feature called server-side scripting. With server-side scripting, interconnect switch scripts can be integrated in an RDP for Windows job for deployment of both blade servers and switches. This is ideal for using RDP for Windows to deploy a blade server and then configure associated switch VLANs; however, any scriptable interconnect switch parameter can be integrated. [. . . ] The architecture of the p-Class system allows for both network adapter and interconnect switch fault tolerance when using ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming. The ProLiant p-Class servers include standard HP NC series network adapters that support all three types of ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming: Switch-assisted Load Balancing (SLB) When teaming HP NC series network adapters with the interconnect switch, NFT and TLB teaming are the same as with any ProLiant system. However, for SLB teaming, the pre-defined switch-to-server architecture across the server blade enclosure's backplane must be considered. sLB requires that all NICs in the team must be connected to the same switch. [. . . ]