Bladecenter T Networking Guidelines - IBM BladeCenter T 8720 Installation And User Manual

BladeCenter T networking guidelines

Your networking administrator should assist in the configuration of the network
infrastructure before you connect the BladeCenter T unit to a LAN switch or similar
network device. This section provides additional guidelines that might be useful in
setting up your system.
A BladeCenter T unit with two Ethernet switch modules and one management
module has the internal configuration that is shown in the following illustration:
Note: 2nd switch module is optional
Each blade server has two independent Ethernet controllers, each with its own
MAC address and a dedicated 1 Gbps link to one of the switch modules in I/O
module bays 1 and 2 (controller 1 to switch A and controller 2 to switch B in the
illustration). In this configuration (the default), the blade servers share access to
four external ports on each switch. There is no internal data path between the two
switches within the BladeCenter T unit; an external network device is required for
data packets to flow from one internal switch to the other.
The management module has a separate internal 100 Mbps link to each switch.
These links are for internal management and control only. No data packets are
allowed to flow from application programs on the blade servers to the management
module over this path. A separate, nonswitched path (not shown) is used for
communication between the management module and a service processor on each
blade server.
A typical, preferred BladeCenter T network topology is shown in the following
illustration. See the IBM Eserver BladeCenter T Planning and Installation Guide
for more information and other topologies and guidelines.
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BladeCenter T Types 8720 and 8730: Installation and User's Guide
MAC
1a
1
1b
2a
2
2b
3a
3
3b
4a
4
4b
5a
5
5b
6a
6
6b
7a
7
7b
8a
8
8b
1 Gbps links
Switch A
Mgmt
Mod
Switch B
1 Gbps links
1 Gbps or
100 Mbps links
10/100 Mbps
100 Mbps links