User guide

HP Virtual Connect for Cisco Network Administrators (version 4.x)
Document Number: C01386629 Date: January 2014
page 30
server NIC ports.
Virtual Connect also supports a feature called “SmartLink” that is enabled on vNets used by servers
with NIC Teaming\bonding enabled. The SmartLink feature will disable the VC downlinks (server
NIC ports) whenever all the VC uplinks for the associated vNet are unplugged. Basically, the
SmartLink feature propagates a link-down event of a vNet’s uplinks to the server NICs in the team.
This allows the NIC Teaming software to failover from one vNet (with all failed uplinks) to
another vNet with functional uplinks. SmartLink is only used in NIC Teaming configurations when
the NIC ports in the Team are connected to different vNets (see “Figure 12. VC Domain Showing
Advanced Usage of vNets and EtherChannel” for an example). HP recommends that SmartLink
only be enabled on a vNet if ALL server NIC ports assigned to the vNet are using NIC Teaming
and are connected to at least one other vNet.
For additional information on NIC Teaming for Windows, see link in the “Additional Resources”
section at the end of this paper.
Virtual Connect and Cisco Terminology Comparison
In addition to using many traditional networking terms, Virtual Connect also introduces some new
networking terminology. Some new terms are needed to properly describe VC’s functionality since
VC represents a new way of interconnecting blade servers to the core network. To aide in quickly
understanding these Virtual Connect networking terms, the following table compares VC and Cisco
networking terms.
Figure 17: Virtual Connect and Cisco Port Trunking and VLAN Trunking Terminology Comparison
Sample Virtual Connect Ethernet and Cisco Nexus Configurations
The sample below is the most common configuration request that we receive.
Sample Configuration: VC Uplinks Connected to Cisco Nexus Access Ports