HP Virtual Connect for the Cisco Network Administrator

HP Virtual Connect for Cisco Network Administrators (version 4.x)
Document Number: C01386629 Date: January 2014
page 44
The monitor session must be configured with at least one ‘monitored port’ and a single ‘analyzer
port’. The ‘monitor port’ list is the list of server downlinks whose traffic will be mirrored. The
‘analyzer port’ is the VC uplink port that the network analyzer is connected to. VC will mirror the
traffic from the monitored ports to the analyzer port.
A Port Monitoring session can mirror the traffic for up to 16 server downlinks to the analyzer port.
Any VC uplink can be defined as the analyzer port and any server downlinks can be selected as
the monitored port. There is no VC Ethernet module dependency.
Lastly, the Administrator can choose the direction of the traffic to mirror – to the server, from
the server, or both.
Logging
Virtual Connect provides a local system log that records VC domain events and timestamps. The
local system log is not editable and does not permit manual clearing (for security purposes). The log
is circular and once the buffer is full, older entries are removed. Virtual connect logs can also be
redirected out to an external syslog server.
Centralized User Access Control (LDAP)
In the current version of VC firmware, TACACS+ and RADIUS are also supported for centralized
user access control.
Please consult the Virtual Connect User Guide for LDAP, TACACS+ and
RADIUS implementation details.
Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)
Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) is a Cisco proprietary protocol used to exchange device identity
and capability information between two directly connected Cisco devices. CDP allows each Cisco
device to display, for the administrator, a table showing the identity and capability of other directly
connected Cisco devices. One of the primary uses of this information is for troubleshooting
purposes.
Virtual Connect does not support CDP. VC does support the industry standard protocol called Link
Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) by default. LLDP is functionally equivalent to CDP, although the
two protocols are not compatible. Many Cisco switches support LLDP. The global configuration
command “lldp run” and the interface commands “lldp transmit” and “lldp receive” are used to
enable LLDP on a Cisco switch that supports the protocol. The exec command “show lldp
neighbors” displays LLDP neighbor information to the Cisco switch console.
Virtual Connect provides the LLDP neighbor information for each VC uplink at the bottom of
the statistics page for each port.