NEC iLO 5, User Manual

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• There are some drawbacks to using this configuration.
• With a shared network connection, traffic can hinder iLO performance.
• During the server boot process and when the OS NIC drivers are loading and unloading, there
are brief periods of time (2–8 seconds) when iLO cannot be reached from the network. After
these short periods, iLO communication is restored and iLO will respond to network traffic.
Figure 2: Shared network connection
NIC teaming with Shared Network Port configurations
NIC teaming is a feature you can use to improve server NIC performance and reliability.
NIC teaming constraints
When you select a teaming mode to use when iLO is configured to use the Shared Network Port:
•
iLO network communications will be blocked in the following conditions:
◦
The selected NIC teaming mode causes the switch that iLO is connected with to ignore
traffic from the server NIC/port that iLO is configured to share.
◦
The selected NIC teaming mode sends all traffic destined for iLO to a NIC/port other than
the one that iLO is configured to share.
• Because iLO and the server transmit and receive on the same switch port, the selected NIC
teaming mode must allow the switch to tolerate traffic with two different MAC addresses on
the same switch port. Some implementations of LACP (802.3ad) will not tolerate multiple MAC
addresses on the same link.
NIC teaming modes
If your server is configured to use NIC teaming, observe the following guidelines.
Network Fault Tolerance
The server transmits and receives on only one NIC (the primary adapter). The other NICs
(secondary adapters) that are part of the team do not transmit server traffic and they ignore
received traffic. This mode allows the iLO Shared Network Port to function correctly.
Select the NIC/port iLO uses as the Preferred Primary Adapter.
Express Server
Server NIC/iLO Shared NIC
Management Clients
Hub/Switch
Management/
Production
Network
Production Clients