ProLiant BL p-Class Interconnect Overview - White Paper

Figure 3. The server blade enclosure backplane routes Ethernet signals from each server blade bay to both interconnect bays.

The network signal routing from the NICs in each ProLiant BL p-Class server blade to the interconnect

bays is provided in Table 2.

Table 2. ProLiant BL p-Class server blade NIC signal routing

Interconnect bay A (left) Interconnect bay B (right)

BL20p 2x NC3163 1x NC3163, 1x iLO

BL20p with

NC7780 Upgrade

1x NC3163, 1x NC7780 1x NC7780, 1x iLO

BL20p G2 2x NC7781 1x NC7781, 1x iLO

BL40p 3x NC7781 2x NC7781, 1x iLO

PXE

Each NC series NIC on the ProLiant BL servers supports PXE, but only one NIC at a time may be PXE

enabled. A NIC on each server is pre-selected as the default PXE NIC. This results in all the PXE

enabled NICs being routed to the same interconnect. However, the ROM Based Setup Utility (RBSU)

for ProLiant BL servers may be used to select any NIC. Thus, system availability can be enhanced by

selecting PXE-enabled NICs that are routed to different interconnect blades.