Operating instructions

138 Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module
There is one case where high availability might still be an issue if NIC Teaming/Trunk Failover
is not configured, and that is if both uplinks from a single Cisco Systems IGESM were to go
down, but the Cisco Systems IGESM itself did not go down. In that case, the blade server
would be unable to detect the upstream failure and issues would arise. Utilizing NIC Teaming
and Trunk Failover would ensure that this is not an issue.
This topology is recommended when NIC teaming is not in use or not practical (for example, if
different VLANs are required on each NIC going to a blade server).
Configurations presented for blade server attachment to this topology
The following discusses the blade server configuration (see Figure 7-8) for this example:
򐂰 BladeServer1: 802.1Q trunk links carrying multiple VLANs to a NIC.
This configuration is provided to demonstrate how to permit multiple VLANs to access
each individual NIC in the blade server. It demonstrates one way to isolate traffic types
from each other through several VLANs per NIC.
Broadcom teaming software is required, but no redundancy is used.
򐂰 BladeServer2: Access ports to NICs through individual connections.
This configuration is provided to demonstrate how to use each NIC as a standard access
link (no VLANs, trunking, or redundancy is used from the blade server’s perspective). This
is the traditional way most servers were attached in the past and is simple and effective,
but not very flexible.
This configuration is performed using the stock network configuration tools available in
Windows 2000 (no teaming software is used).
򐂰 BladeServer3: Access ports to NICs through SLB/teamed connections.
This configuration is provided to show how to use multiple NICs to look like a single
access NIC to the rest of the upstream network (the Cisco Systems IGESMs). It makes
use of the teaming drivers to tie the NICs together, but does not use any special VLAN
configuration. From the Cisco Systems IGESMs perspective, both connections are
configured as simple access ports with a static VLAN assigned.
– This configuration will make use of the Broadcom teaming software to bind and
balance the links together; the Cisco Systems IGESMs will establish what VLAN the
teamed ports will be placed into (it will need to be the same VLAN for both Cisco
Systems IGESM ports that go to this server).
– The example for BladeServer3 provided in this chapter uses what is known as
Active/Active, or Server Load Balancing, such that both interfaces can be carrying
traffic at the same time. This is opposed to Active/Standby (not shown here), also
known as Hot Standby, where only one of the links is up at a time.
Important: The blade server configurations offered in this chapter are not necessarily part
of the topology discussion, but instead their configurations are provided in this section as a
means to help you understand some of the possibilities for attaching the servers to this
topology. The examples should
not be construed as the way a blade server must be
configured. If your only goal is to understand a given server attachment example, it is
possible to just review that specific example and its associated upstream connection on the
Cisco Systems IGESMs and ignore the extra blade server configurations.