Networking in the chassis

HPE EL4000 4x10G 2xQSFP+ PThru System networking

This configuration has two external 40GbE QSFP+ ports, labelled A and B. The NIC A of each of the four blades is connected to the external port A. The NIC B of each blade is connected to the external port B through a single 10G lane within the 40GbE port. The connection is a pass-through one, as the blade 10G NIC port is routed directly to the external port. If required, VLAN segmentation can be configured at the external switch, based on the ports to which the blades are connected.

To connect to an external switch, you can use one of the following methods:

• Using a 40G to 4x10G breakout copper or optical transceiver solution.

  Each of the 10G strands of the breakout cable is a 10GbE connection to a blade in the chassis. On the HPE 40G to 4x10G DAC cable, the 10G breakout cable labeled A is connected to Blade 1. The 10G breakout cable marked B is connected to Blade 2, and so on. Each of these cables can be connected to a 10GbE SFP+ port on an external switch.

• Using a 40G to 40G copper or optical transceiver.

  This 40G connection is actually four 10GbE connections carried within a single cable. At the external switch, the port to which this cable connects must be configured in 4x10GbE mode, rather than the native 40GbE mode. Any per-blade port configuration in the external switch is applied to the component 10G port within the 40G port.

HPE EL4000 10G 2xSFP+ Switch System networking

This configuration has two external 10GbE SFP+ ports, labelled A and B. The NIC A of each of the four blades is internally switched within the system to the external 10GbE SFP+ port labeled A. Unicast packets to a blade are sent only to that blade, while multicast or broadcast packets are sent to all blades.

For VLAN segmentation, you can use one of the following methods:

• If all the NIC As are in the same VLAN, that VLAN can be configured at the port of the external switch to which the system port A is connected. Similarly, all of the NIC Bs may be configured in another VLAN if necessary.
• If each blade must be in a different VLAN, then VLAN tagging must be configured at the blade, typically at the operating system level. The port of the external switch to which the EL4000 network port is attached must be configured as a trunk port. Appropriate configuration of the tagged VLAN used by the system must be done at the external switch. VLAN 1 is always treated as the untagged default VLAN.

The EL4000 switched chassis can be configured to support NIC teaming by propagating external switch uplink state to NICs inside the chassis. The link state of NICs can then be used by OS-based networking stacks to implement network teaming. This functionality is controlled by S4 on the chassis DIP-Switch block (see pages 8-9 for location of this switch block). Uplink propagation is disabled by default with S4 in the “off” position, and is enabled by setting S4 to "on". The default mode of “off” allows the network switches in the chassis to act a standalone switch, allowing all blades in the chassis to communicate with each other with or without an external uplink. Teaming is not possible in this mode. With uplink propagation enabled, switch uplink state is mirrored to all blade NICs connected to the switch.

The following chassis firmware versions (or later) is required to support this functionality:

HPE EL4000 10G 2SFP+ Switch PXIe System networking (data capture and control)

This configuration has two external 10GbE SFP+ ports, labelled A and B. The NIC A of each of the four blades is internally switched to the external 10GbE SFP+ port labelled A. Unicast packets to a blade are sent only to that blade, while multicast or broadcast packets are sent to all blades.

For VLAN segmentation, you can use one of the following methods:

• If all the NIC As are in the same VLAN, that VLAN can be configured at the port of the external switch to which the system port A is connected. All of the NIC Bs can be configured to be in another VLAN.
• If each blade must be in a different VLAN, then VLAN tagging must be configured at the blade, typically at the operating system level. The port of the external switch to which the EL4000 network port is attached must be configured as a trunk port. Appropriate configuration of the tagged VLAN used by the system must be done at the external switch. VLAN 1 is always treated as the untagged default VLAN. VLAN 2 and VLAN 3 are used internally by the embedded switch within the system, and cannot be configured as tagged VLANs on the blades.