ProLiant BL p-Class Interconnect Overview - White Paper

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The two GbE Interconnect Switches are connected across the server blade enclosure backplane
through a pair of redundant 10/100 Ethernet crosslinks bundled into a multi-port EtherChannel
compatible trunk (see Figure 9). These crosslinks permit communication between the switches for
additional management capability, fault tolerance, and cable reduction. As a result, any single uplink
port may be used to connect to all 32 NICs for a 32-to-1 network cable reduction.
Figure 9. ProLiant BL p-Class GbE Interconnect Kit architecture
The redundant architecture of the GbE Interconnect Kit allows system administrators to configure the
Ethernet network for continued access to each server blade in case of the following failures:
• Interconnect switch failure
• Switch failure within the Ethernet network backbone
• Server blade network adapter failure
• Server blade NIC-to-interconnect switch port failure or connection failure
• Uplink port and uplink port connection or cable failure
• Interconnect switch crosslink port or connection failure
• Power or fan failure
For more information, see the ProLiant BL p-Class GbE Interconnect Kit Overview
white paper.
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Available at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliant-bl/p-class/bl-p-interconnect-switch.html.