HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager 6.1 User Guide

Figure 1-1 HP Virtual Connect technology
The Virtual Connect architecture is integrated into every BladeSystem c-Class enclosure and built on industry
standards, allowing operations with a broad range of switch brands that includes Cisco, Brocade, Juniper,
BNT and HP ProCurve. Virtual Connect functionality is delivered using high performance Virtual Connect
Ethernet and Fibre Channel modules that plug into the standard BladeSystem c-Class enclosure interconnect
bays. Each Virtual Connect module provides dense port aggregation that turns multiple physical network
connections to each server into a few simple high-speed uplinks that greatly reduce infrastructure complexity
and costs. To the external networks, Virtual Connect modules appear as regular pass-through devices, but
provide the benefits of integrated switching. HP BladeSystem enclosures configured with Virtual Connect
Ethernet and Fiber Channel modules are referred to as Virtual Connect domains. A VC domain is a logical
group that can be a single enclosure with up to 16 servers, or up to four physically linked enclosures running
to 64 servers.
To establish server connections to LANs and SANs, Virtual Connect uses server connection profiles in
combination with dynamic pools of unique media access control (MAC) addresses and world wide names
(WWN). A Virtual Connect server profile is a logical grouping of server connection attributes that can be
assigned to any bay in a BladeSystem enclosure. When assigned to an enclosure bay, the server in that
bay assumes the attributes of the profile which can include:
• MAC addresses for all NICs
• WWNs for all Host Bus Adapters (HBAs)
• Fibre Channel boot from SAN parameters
• Logical serial numbers
An important benefit of Virtual Connect is that server connection profiles and associated attributes are
assigned to BladeSystem enclosure bays and not hard wired to individual servers. The physical server in
each bay uses the MAC and WWN assignments in the bay profile instead of its default burned-in network
interface (NIC) or host bus adapter (HBA) addresses. Using this model, even if a server is replaced, the MAC
and WWN assignments for the enclosure bay remain constant, and the change is invisible to the network.
During Virtual Connect installation, the LAN and SAN administrators are still responsible for defining the
networks, subnets, and storage LUNs that the servers will use, but they no longer have to be involved in
every server-centric change. Once implemented, Virtual Connect allows system administrators to be more
14 Introduction