HP Virtual Connect 1Gb Ethernet Cookbook

Scenario 1 – Simple vNet with Active/Standby Uplinks and Optional Link Aggregation 802.3ad (LACP) - Windows 15
Scenario 1 – Simple vNet with
Active/Standby Uplinks and Optional Link
Aggregation 802.3ad (LACP) - Windows
Overview
This simple configuration uses the Virtual Connect vNet. The vNet is the simplest way to connect
Virtual Connect to a network and server. In this scenario, the upstream network switch connects a
network to a single port on each VC module.
No special upstream switch configuration is required as the switch is in the factory default
configuration, typically configured as Access ports.
When configuring Virtual Connect, we can provide several ways to implement network fail-over or
redundancy. One option would be to connect TWO uplinks to a single vNet; those two uplinks would
connect from different Virtual Connect modules within the enclosure and could then connect to the
same upstream switch or two different upstream switches, depending on your redundancy needs.
An alternative would be to configure TWO separate vNets, each with a single uplink configured and
connection to two switches. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages. We will review the
first option in this scenario.
In addition, several vNets can be configured to support the required networks to the servers within
the BladeSystem enclosure. These networks could be used to separate the various network traffic,
such as iSCSI, backup, VMotion from production network traffic.
The single vNet is a popular configuration when supporting primarily East/West traffic patterns. No
matter which NIC a server is active on, if talking to another server within the enclosure on the same
vNet, the traffic will remain within VC/the enclosure.
Requirements
In order to implement this scenario, an HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure with one or more server
blades and TWO Virtual Connect Ethernet modules, installed in Bays 1& 2 are required. In addition,
we will require ONE or TWO external Network switches. As Virtual Connect does not appear to the
network as a switch and is transparent to the network, any standard managed switch will work with
Virtual Connect and Spanning Tree (STP) is not required.