Operating instructions

Chapter 5. Cisco Systems IGESM management and user orientation 41
and the Management Module itself. The IGESM can be managed via this path or over its own
external uplinks. (See 5.3, “In-depth management path discussions” on page 55 for a more
in-depth discussion for the rules for these management paths.)
By default, the Ethernet internal switch management ports are placed in VLAN 1. Typically,
Cisco’s recommendation is not to use VLAN 1 for security reasons, but it is still common to
use VLAN 1 for management purposes. It is also very important that you put the management
interface for the IGESM in a VLAN that is not shared by any of the blade server interfaces.
5.2.2 In-band management definition
The second mode of operation that is used by some customers is in-band management. In
this case, the management traffic passes through the data traffic path (the IGESM uplinks).
When BladeCenter switches are configured for in-band management, the internal port
configuration on the switch that is connected to the BladeCenter Management Module’s
internal interface is still automatically changed to be in the same management VLAN. This
can lead to some unexpected results. (See 5.3.5, “Considerations: Using the IGESM uplinks
to manage the IGESM” on page 61 for details on configuring for in-band management.)
In-band management when configured has to share the limited bandwidth with the rest of the
client/server traffic. If not managed properly, broadcast traffic can possibly overload the
Management Module CPU, which might lead to other serious problems.
5.2.3 Management traffic paths to the Cisco Systems IGESM
In this section, we discuss the various methods of attaching to and managing the Cisco
Systems IGESM. For the following discussions, management traffic can include HTTP, Telnet,
TFTP, and SNMP-based traffic between a Management Workstation and the Cisco Systems
IGESM. See 5.3, “In-depth management path discussions” on page 55 for more details.
Figure 5-26 on page 42 represents the most common paths that can be taken when
connecting to the Cisco Systems IGESM.
A summary of the paths
Paths 1 and 2 are classified as traditional out-of-band management paths to the Cisco
Systems IGESM (out-of-band because the management traffic does not utilize the same
physical connections as the data traffic).
Paths 3 and 4 are classified as traditional in-band management paths to the Cisco Systems
IGESM.
Path 5 is sometimes classified as a form of out-of-band management and may or may not be
connected to either the Management Network or the Routed Production network through a
terminal server.
Important: Configuring blade servers to use the IGESM management VLAN may result in
unexpected duplicate IP addresses being reported. This is the result of the Management
Module attempting to proxy for devices on its internal connection. Figure 5-51 on page 73
shows a more detailed explanation.