HP StoreOnce 6500 Backup Installation Planning and Preparation Guide

IMPORTANT: Once you have created a portset, the ports that you have defined for that portset
are no longer available for use in other portsets. If you define a portset on eth0 and eth1 (the
default setting) and use it to connect to a Management subnet, your options for creating subsequent
portsets that will be used to connect to Data subnets are automatically reduced to:
eth2, eth3 (1 Gig)
eth5, eth7 (10 Gig)
Physical subnets and portsets are one-to-one; which means that each physical subnet is configured
on one portset only. However, multiple virtual subnets (VLANs) may be attached to a single portset
(up to a maximum of 128), if the portset is VLAN enabled.
Supported network bonding modes
Bonding modes are critical to any network configuration, so please be careful and take extra care
choosing which network bonding mode is the best choice for you connection.
Three bonding modes are supported:
• Mode 1 (Active/Backup)
This is the most simple bonding mode; it allows network traffic via one active port only and
requires no specific extra switch configuration. It is recommended for simple network
connections; if the active network link fails then traffic moves to the backup port.
• Mode 4 (IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation)
This bonding mode is also known as LACP and requires a special external switch configuration.
It provides a link aggregation solution, increasing the bond physical bandwidth but can only
work if all the ports in the bond are connected to one switch or switches joined by an interswitch
link. It is recommended when :
◦ The customer wants to increase throughput to the StoreOnce appliance
◦ Trunks between switches on the customer network already use LACP mode
The LACP protocol only works when it is configured on both ends of the physical connection.
Please refer to your switch documentation for information on LACP configuration.
• Mode 6 (Active Load Balancing)
This mode provides a load balance solution. It does not require specific external switch
configuration, but does require the switch to allow ARP negotiation. It can be used in a 2–switch
configuration. However, in some environments ARP packet negotiation may be disabled within
the network infrastructure, so this mode may not be appropriate.
NOTE: It is recommended that network switches have their Spanning Tree protocol configuration
enabled before connecting the StoreOnce appliance.
Number of physical ports required
The number of physical connections that are required depends upon the portsets that you intend
to configure for each subnet and the number of couplets in the system. This number should not be
confused with the number of IP addresses required.
Table 13 Number of physical network ports required per portset
Four coupletsThree coupletsTwo coupletsOne coupletTraffic typePortset
161284Management
only
2 per node1GbE ports
161284Data only2 per node10GbE ports
Supported network bonding modes 21