HP XC System Software Hardware Preparation Guide Version 3.0

For physically larger platforms (2U and larger) such the HP Integrity rx2600 and HP ProLiant DL585 servers,
a smaller number of servers can be placed in a single cabinet. In this case, the branch switch is a ProCurve
Switch 2824, which is sufficient to support up to 19 nodes.
In this release, the HP XC System Software supports the use of one-wire connections or two-wire trunks
between the Root Administration Switches and the Branch Administration Switches. The HP XC System
Software supports the use of a one-wire connection or up to an eight-wire trunk between the Super Root
Switch and the Root Administration Switch of each region. In most installations, four-wire trunks are used.
It is important to know that the trunks must be configured on both switches before plugging the cables in
between the switches. Otherwise, a loop is created between the switches, and the network is rendered
useless.
Because of the architecture of the ProCurve switch, the HP XC System Software uses only 10 ports of each
12 to ensure maximum bandwidth through the switch. Thus, a configuration restriction of trunking on the
ProCurve switch is that the trunk must exist within the 12 port segment. As a result, in order to configure a
ProCurve 2848 Super Root Switch for 3 regions using four-wire trunks, the following ports are used for each
region:
• Region 1 - Ports 1,2,3,4
• Region 2 - Ports 5,6,7,8
• Region 3 - Ports 13,14,15,16
• Ports 9,10,11, and 12 in this case are not used
Switches
The following topics are described in this section:
• Specialized Switch Use (page 20)
• Administrator Passwords on a ProCurve Switch (page 21)
• Switch Port Connections (page 21)
• Special Considerations for Switch Connections and HP Workstations (page 22)
• Super Root Switch (page 22)
• Root Administration Switch (page 23)
• Root Console Switches (page 24)
• Branch Administration Switches (page 26)
• Branch Console Switches (page 27)
Specialized Switch Use
There are a number of switches with specialized uses in an HP XC system:
Super Root Switch This switch is the top level switch in a large-scale system,
that is, an HP XC system with more than 512 nodes requiring
more than one Root Administration switch. Root
Administration switches are connected directly to this switch.
Root Administration Switch This switch connects directly to Gigabit Ethernet ports of the
head node, the Root Console Switch, nodes, and Branch
Administration Switches.
Root Console Switch This switch connects to the Root Administration Switch and
connects to the management console Ethernet ports of any
utility nodes and Branch Console Switches.
Branch Administration Switch This switch connects to the Gigabit Ethernet ports of compute
nodes and connects to the Root Administration Switch.
Branch Console Switch This switch connects to the Root Console Switch and connects
to the management console Ethernet ports of the compute
nodes.
Table 2-1 lists the switch models that are supported for each use.
20 Making Node and Switch Connections