6.3 HP StoreAll Storage Installation Guide (TA768-96085, April 2013)

Specifying VIFs in the client configuration
When you configure your clients, you may need to specify the VIF that should be used for client
access.
NFS/SMB. Specify the VIF IP address of the servers (for example, bond0:1) to establish connection.
You can also configure DNS round robin to ensure NFS or SMB client-to-server distribution. In both
cases, the NFS/SMB clients will cache the initial IP they used to connect to the respective share,
usually until the next reboot.
FTP. When you add an FTP share on the Add FTP Shares dialog box or with the ibrix_ftpshare
command, specify the VIF as the IP address that clients should use to access the share.
HTTP. When you create a virtual host on the Create Vhost dialog box or with the
ibrix_httpvhost command, specify the VIF as the IP address that clients should use to access
shares associated with the Vhost.
StoreAll clients. Use the following command to prefer the appropriate user network. Execute the
command once for each destination host that the client should contact using the specified interface.
ibrix_client -n -h SRCHOST -A DESTNOST/IFNAME
For example:
ibrix_client -n -h client12.mycompany.com -A ib50-81.mycompany.com/bond1
NOTE: Because the backup NIC cannot be used as a preferred network interface for StoreAll
clients, add one or more user network interfaces to ensure that HA and client communication work
together.
Configuring VLAN tagging
VLAN capabilities provide hardware support for running multiple logical networks over the same
physical networking hardware. To allow multiple packets for different VLANs to traverse the same
physical interface, each packet must have a field added that contains the VLAN tag. The tag is a
small integer number that identifies the VLAN to which the packet belongs. When an intermediate
switch receives a “tagged” packet, it can make the appropriate forwarding decisions based on
the value of the tag.
When set up properly, StoreAll systems support VLAN tags being transferred all of the way to the
file serving node network interfaces. The ability of file serving nodes to handle the VLAN tags
natively in this manner makes it possible for the nodes to support multiple VLAN connections
simultaneously over a single bonded interface.
Linux networking tools such as ifconfig display a network interface with an associated VLAN
tag using a device label with the form bond#.<VLAN_id>. For example, if the first bond created
by StoreAll has a VLAN tag of 30, it will be labeled bond0.30.
It is also possible to add a VIF on top of an interface that has an associated VLAN tag. In this case,
the device label of the interface takes the form bond#.<VLAN_id>.<VVIF_label>. For example,
if a VIF with a label of 2 is added for the bond0.30 interface, the new interface device label will
be bond0.30:2.
76 Configuring virtual interfaces for client access