Network Bonding Modes; Vlan Subnets With Hp Storeonce Backup - HP StoreOnce 2700 Installation And Configuration Manual

Network bonding modes

Each set of network ports on the appliance can be configured either on separate Subnets or in a
bond with each other (1 Gbit and 10 Gbit ethernet ports cannot be bonded together).
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 only
works 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 the network switch and StoreOnce
end of the 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.
This configuration is generally recommended for backup data performance and also for
resiliency of both data and management network connectivity. However, in some environments
ARP packet negotiation may be disabled within the network infrastructure, so this mode may
not be appropriate.
NOTE: When using bonded ports the full performance of bonded links are only realized if multiple
host servers are providing data, otherwise data will still use only one network path from the single
server.

VLAN Subnets with HP StoreOnce Backup

There is a fixed number of available physical NIC ports on the HP StoreOnce Backup, defined by
the number of 1 Gbit ports plus 10 Gbit ethernet ports, therefore there is a limit on the number of
physical Subnets to which the HP StoreOnce Backup can be directly connected. If your network
requires more Subnets than this—for example, twenty—the network administrator can define 20
VLANs, each with its own Subnet and, typically, use the 10 Gbit ethernet bonded link to the HP
StoreOnce Backup as a trunk.
To do this, the network administrator sets up the switches with the necessary VLANs and identifies
20 tags. (The tag values can be any integer between range 2-4094.) The ports on the network
switch to which the StoreOnce Backup connects must be trunked and tagged. Then using the
StoreOnce CLI, the HP StoreOnce administrator modifies the network configuration by first defining
the Port Set for the physical 10 Gbit ethernet link and making it VLAN enabled, and then configuring
each of the twenty VLAN Subnets to use that Port Set.
Network configuration basics 33