Introduction 12
HP Ethernet Connectivity Mapper utility (hpecm)
The HP Ethernet Connectivity Mapper is a utility used to determine the NIC name enumeration and the associated
mapping to switch ports. The physical connections between server blade network interface controllers (NICs) and
switch ports depend on the server blade type and the enclosure backplane type, as described above. The logical NIC
name enumeration depends on the operating system software (such as Local Area Connection, Local Area
Connection 2, etc. for Windows; eth0, eth1, etc. for Linux).
hpecm
is a graphical tool which collects information about the contents of a ProLiant BL blade enclosure, including
enclosure type, blade type, and blade operating system (OS). It then displays the mapping between the switch or
patch panel ports and the OS enumeration (naming order) of the blade network interface controller (NIC) ports.
Configuration validation is performed as items are selected, so
hpecm
may also be used as an aid to configuration
and/or deployment planning.
To obtain the HP Ethernet Connectivity Mapper, download the Interconnect Switch Management Utilities from the HP
website (
http://www.hp.com/support
). Search for
GbE2
.
GbE2 Interconnect Switches
Two GbE2 Interconnect Switches in the ProLiant BL p-Class server blade enclosure provide switch redundancy and
redundant paths to the network ports on the server blades. Each GbE2 Interconnect Switch has six external Ethernet
ports and sixteen internal Gigabit Ethernet ports providing connectivity to the blade servers within the enclosure.
Each pair of GbE2 Interconnect Switches consolidates up to thirty-two 10/100/1000 Ethernet signals into one-to-
eight Gigabit ports (on the back of the system) plus four additional Gigabit Ethernet ports (on the front of the GbE2
Interconnect Switches). This design eliminates up to 31 network cables from the back of the server blade enclosure.
Redundant crosslinks
The two GbE2 Interconnect Switches are connected through redundant 10/100/1000 crosslinks. These two
crosslinks provide an aggregate throughput of 2 Gb/s for traffic between the GbE2 Interconnect Switches.
Redundant paths to server bays
Redundant Ethernet signals from each blade server are routed through the enclosure backplane to separate GbE2
Interconnect Switches within the enclosure. Two Ethernet signals are routed to Switch A and two are routed to Switch
B. This configuration provides redundant paths to each server bay.
Redundant Ethernet signals from each blade server are routed through the enclosure backplane to separate GbE2
Interconnect Switches within the enclosure. However, specific switch port to server mapping varies depending on
which type of server blade is installed. For example, for ProLiant BL20p series servers, two Ethernet signals are routed
to Switch A and two are routed to Switch B. This configuration provides redundant paths to each server bay.
On a heavily used system, using a single uplink port for 32 Ethernet signals can cause a traffic bottleneck. For
optimum performance, HP recommends that at least one uplink port per GbE2 Interconnect Switch be used.
The two front panel 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T ports per GbE2 Interconnect Switch may also be used for
additional uplink bandwidth to the network.
Supported technologies
The ProLiant BL p-Class GbE2 Interconnect Switch supports the following technologies.
Layer 2 switching
The ProLiant BL p-Class GbE2 Interconnect Switch uses 10/100/1000 Gigabit Layer 2 switching technology. Layer 2
refers to the Data Link layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, which is concerned with moving data
packets across a network by enforcing Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD). This layer
performs the following tasks:
•
Ethernet packet framing
•
Medium Access Control (MAC) addressing
•
Physical medium transmission error detection
•
Medium allocation (collision avoidance)
•
Contention resolution (collision handling)
