Storage Node Connection Options - HP P4000 SAN Technical White Paper

Storage node connection options

HP P4000 rack mounted storage nodes come equipped with two 1GbE network interfaces standard. When building
high-performance, high-availability IP storage networks, HP recommends implementing NIC bonding on every storage
node connected to the network. HP SAN/iQ-powered storage nodes support a variety of network interface bonding
techniques, and you should choose the appropriate NIC bonding solution for your environment. The HP P4000 allows
each storage node to be represented as a single IP address on the network; at this writing, the software does not
support storage nodes with multiple IP connections to the same network. Table 2 highlights the HP P4000 software–
supported NIC bonding types and provides recommendations for using each of them.
Table 2. HP SAN/iQ software NIC-bonding support
NIC bonding support
Adaptive load balancing
(preferred method)
Active/Passive
Link aggregation—
802.3ad
Note these other general recommendations when implementing NIC bonding on the storage nodes:
1. Implement the same NIC bonding type on all storage nodes in the cluster.
2. Implement NIC bonding before joining the storage node to the management group.
Description
ALB is the most flexible NIC bonding technique that can be enabled on the storage nodes. It
provides for increased bandwidth and fault tolerance. Typically, no special switch configuration is
needed in order to implement ALB. Both NICs in the storage nodes are made active, and they can
be connected to different switches for active-active port failover. Any individual client will not
exceed bandwidth of an individual link. ALB is supported only for NICs with the same speeds: for
example, 2GbE NICs. ALB is not supported between a 10GbE NIC and 1GbE NIC.
Active/Passive NIC bonding is the simplest NIC bonding technique that can be enabled on the
storage nodes. It provides for high availability only. No special switch configuration is typically
required to implement active/passive bonding. Only a single NIC is made active, while the other
NIC is made passive. Therefore, an active/passive only a single port is active.
Link aggregation (LACP/802.3ad) NIC bonding is the most complex NIC bonding technique that
can be enabled on the storage nodes. It provides for link aggregation only. Link aggregation
bonds must typically be built on both the storage node and switch as port pairs. Both NICs in the
storage nodes are made active; however they can only be connected to a single switch or in a
stacked switch configuration where the stack is one logical switch (unless switch vendor provides
proprietary extensions to make it multi-switch aware). An individual client will not exceed the
bandwidth of an individual link. 802.3ad is supported only for NICs with the same speed and
duplex: for example, two Gigabit Ethernet NICs. 802.3ad is not supported between a 10GbE
NIC and a 1GbE NIC.
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