Best Practices for HP BladeSystem Deployments using HP Serviceguard Solutions for HP-UX 11i (May 2010)

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An improvement of this configuration would be to ensure the primary and standby LANs pass through
different VC modules, with the output ports on the VC modules connected to separate Ethernet
switches that are bridged together. This configuration would protect against the failure of a LOM port
controller, the network ports on the Mezzanine card, a VC module, a switch or cabling, and would
eliminate many more possible failure points. An example of such a configuration, using LOM ports 1
and 4 routed to different VC modules, is described in the next section.
The following is one example of using HP Virtual Connect to create a server profile for a BL860c
server blade to minimize SPOFs for its network and Fiber Channel connections. Note this is one
example, and many other acceptable HA configurations are possible depending on what Mezzanine
cards and interconnect modules are available for a server blade to utilize.
Figure 9 shows an HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator window with information on a BL860c
server bladed installed in device bay 7.
Figure 9: Onboard Administrator Window showing BL860c information for Device Bay 7
In this example, the BL860c has 4 embedded LOM NIC ports (ports 1 and 2 sharing one PCIe bus
and ports 3 and 4 sharing another PCIe bus), an iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) port, a 4Gb Fiber
Channel Mezzanine card in Mezzanine Slot 1 and a Quad Port 1Gb NIC Mezzanine Card in
Mezzanine Slot 2. Figure 10 shows the Port Mapping view for this server blade in Device Bay 7.
LOM and
mezzanine
card
information