6.0 HP X9320 Network Storage System Administrator Guide (AW542-96009, December 2011)

Adding user network interfaces
Although the cluster network can carry traffic between file serving nodes and either NFS/CIFS or
X9000 clients, you may want to create user network interfaces to carry this traffic. If your cluster
must accommodate a mix of NFS/CIFS clients and X9000 clients, or if you need to segregate
client traffic to different networks, you will need one or more user networks. In general, it is better
to assign a user network for NFS/CIFS traffic because the cluster network cannot host the virtual
interfaces (VIFs) required for NFS/CIFS failover. HP recommends that you use a Gigabit Ethernet
port (or faster) for user networks.
When creating user network interfaces for file serving nodes, keep in mind that nodes needing to
communicate for file system coverage or for failover must be on the same network interface. Also,
nodes set up as a failover pair must be connected to the same network interface.
HP recommends that the default network be routed through the base User Network interface.
For a highly available cluster, HP recommends that you put NFS traffic on a dedicated user network
and then set up automated failover for it (see “Setting up automated failover” (page 29)). This
method prevents interruptions to NFS traffic. If the cluster interface is used for NFS traffic and that
interface fails on a file serving node, any NFS clients using the failed interface to access a mounted
file system will lose contact with the file system because they have no knowledge of the cluster and
cannot reroute requests to the standby for the node.
Link aggregation and virtual interfaces
When creating a user network interface, you can use link aggregation to combine physical resources
into a single VIF. VIFs allow you to provide many named paths within the larger physical resource,
each of which can be managed and routed independently, as shown in the following diagram.
See the network interface vendor documentation for any rules or restrictions required for link
aggregation.
Identifying a user network interface for a file serving node
To identify a user network interface for specific file serving nodes, use the ibrix_nic command.
The interface name (IFNAME) can include only alphanumeric characters and underscores, such
as eth1.
<installdirectory>/bin/ibrix_nic -a -n IFNAME -h HOSTLIST
If you are identifying a VIF, add the VIF suffix (:nnnn) to the physical interface name. For example,
the following command identifies virtual interface eth1:1 to physical network interface eth1 on
file serving nodes s1.hp.com and s2.hp.com:
<installdirectory>/bin/ibrix_nic -a -n eth1:1 -h s1.hp.com,s2.hp.com
When you identify a user network interface for a file serving node, the management console queries
the node for its IP address, netmask, and MAC address and imports the values into the configuration
database. You can modify these values later if necessary.
72 Maintaining the system