HP Flex Fabric Active-Active Configuration


Introduction
Flex Fabric in some cases can make our IT life a bit easier. The Flex Fabric switch merges the SAN switch and LAN switch all together. A number of upload ports on the switch allow you to link to your LAN or SAN. Depending on the throughput speed you need on the blades will determine the number of uplinks that need to be installed.

The enclosure will be fitted with two of these Flex Fabric switches, because of redundancy purposes. By default the switches are configured in an Active-Standby LAN configuration, meaning only one switch will be utilized for handling the LAN traffic. Now, in environments where more throughput is needed it would be beneficial to have an Active-Active LAN configuration.

 

How is it achieved?

Required ActionScreenshot
Make sure the physical paths to the uplinks ports, are configured as LACP links. Containing the same VLANs or trunk.001_LACP
Create two uplink sets for each switch containing the same set of uplink ports. Both the uplinks are now Active.002_UplinkSet
Configure the same set of networks/VLANs, linking the individual UplinkSets. Use a naming convention that will tell the difference between two of the same networks both using a different UplinkSet (or switches if you will).003_ExternalConnections
Next, a server profile has to be created and attached to a blade server. Via this profile the server is configured with NICs and HBA adapters as per configured in the server profile.004_ServerProfiles
The last step is to configure the OS with the adapters. Using teaming software in the OS, will allow you to actively use more than one uplink or load balance between the two uplinks.005_NicTeaming

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