Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

HP Virtual Connect & VMware vSphere 4

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HP 7000 EnclosureAs I’ve mentioned in the past we’re kicking off a very large endeavor to move a significant number of our servers to a virtual environment. Over the past two weeks we built out an HP 7000 enclosure with 4 HP BL460c server blades, 6 HP Virtual Connect 1/10 Gb-F Ethernet interconnects, and 2 HP Virtual Connect 8Gb 24-Port Fiber Channel interconnects. The purpose of this hardware is to provide a temporary staging location as we perform the physical to virtual conversions before moving the virtual machines (across the network) to a new data center where additional VMware vSphere 4 clusters will be waiting.

We had some small issues when we first turned up the enclosure but the biggest hurdle was our unfamiliarity with Virtual Connect and locating the default factory passwords (we had ordered the enclosure as a special build so it came pre-assembled which saved us a lot of time and effort and was well worth the small added cost).

We’re currently using two Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5530s in a stack configuration mounted at the top of the rack. We also have a Nortel Redundant Power Supply Unit (RPSU) 15 installed to provide redundant power in the event that we loose a one of the rooms UPS’s or that we have an issue with an internal power supply in either ERS 5530 switch.  We load software release 6.1 onto the ERS 5530s and so far haven’t observed any issues. We’re initially connecting the ERS 5530 stack via 2 1000BaseSX (1Gbps) uplinks distributed across both ERS 5530 switches (DMLT) to a pair of Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600s running in a cluster configuration using IST/SMLT(SLT) trunking. As the solution grows we can expand the uplink capacity by adding additional 1Gbps uplinks or by installing 10Gbps XFPs. We’re downlinking from the ERS 5530 stack to multiple HP Virtual Connect 1/10Gb-F modules using LACP. Unfortunately you can’t have a LAG span multiple HP Virtual Connect 1/10Gb-F Ethernet modules as this time. If you do, only the ports on one of the modules will be “Active” while the ports on other modules will by in “Standby”.

hpvirtualconnect110gbfThe HP Virtual Connect 1/10 Gb-F Ethernet interconnects provide 16 Internal 1Gb Downlinks,  4 External 10/100/1000BASE-T Uplinks, 2 External 10/100/1000BASE-T SFP Uplinks, 2 External 10Gb XFP Uplinks, 1 External 10Gb CX-4 Uplinks, and 1 10Gb Internal Cross Connect. Using the internal 10Gbps cross connect along with the external 10Gb CX-4 uplink you can create a 10Gbps network within the enclosure. You can also link multiple enclosures together to form a 10Gbps network contained entirely within the rack. This could be very beneficial in keeping vMotion and other unneeded traffic off the core uplinks.

In testing we did run into a significant problem that already appears to have been documented by HP although a solution is yet to be formulated. In testing several failure scenarios (physically removing the HP Virtual Connect Ethernet interconnects or remotely powering them down) we observed a significant problem when the interconnects where restored. The HP Virtual connect 1/10Gb-F would show no link to the blade server while the VMware 4 console would indicate that there was link. This problem obviously affected all traffic associated with that port group. The solution was to either reboot the VMware host or reset the NIC using ethtool -r  {NIC} from the server console.

Here’s the excerpt from the release notes;

When a VC-Enet module is running VC v1.30 firmware or higher, a link might not be re-established
between the module and the ports of an NC364m mezzanine card under the following conditions:

  • The network mappings are changed on the NIC ports through Virtual Connect.
  • The VC-Enet module is restarted from a power-cycle or reboot, or the module is removed and inserted.

If the server is rebooted, the link is established on all ports on both sides of the connection. Manually
toggling the link from the server should also restore the link.

The jury is still out on HP’s Virtual Connect although I hope to dig deeper in later posts.

Cheers!

References;
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/c-class-interconnects.html
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01730696/c01730696.pdf

User Interface Button (UI Button)

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[ad name=”ad-articlebodysq”]A front panel-mounted button on some switch models that you can use for easy stacking configuration. The UI button is supported on the Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series of switches. That was the definition of the term “User Interface button (UI button)” from the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series Terminology document although I have a better definition. A front panel-mounted button that is completely useless for anything other than providing end-users the ability to crash the network.

You can guess where I’m going with this one right? I’ll spare everyone the story… although here’s what the little devil of a button can do according to the documentation.

Assigning IP parameters using the UI button

  1. Press and hold the UI button for 3 seconds.
    The unit will now be in configuration mode. The Status LED will now change to a blinking green status.
  2. Press the UI button 5 times.
    The Base LED and the Up and Down LEDs will now be steady amber to indicate that the button press was recognized.
  3. Press the UI button and hold in for 3 seconds to confirm the command.
    The In-Use IP address will now be changed to 192.168.192.168. The color and status of the Status LED will turn to steady green once the command has been accepted. If the command is rejected, the Status LED turns amber blinking.
  4. Initial IP configuration using the UI button is now complete.
    To continue with switch configuration, access the switch through the NNCLI, Web-based Management Interface, or Device Manager.

Setting a base unit using the UI button

  1. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds.
    The unit is now in configuration mode. The color and status of the Status LED turns to blinking green.
  2. Press the UI button once.
    The Base LED is illuminated and the Up and Down LEDs are off to indicate that the button press was recognized.
  3. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds to confirm the command.
    The Status LED returns to a steady green state to confirm command acceptance. If the command is rejected, the Status LED moves to a blinking amber state.

Setting non-base units using the UI button

  1. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds.
    The unit is now in configuration mode. The color and status of the Status LED turns to blinking green.
  2. Press the UI button twice.
    The Base LED will turn off and the Up and Down LEDs are turned off.
  3. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds to confirm the commands.

Resetting a stack using the UI button

  1. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds.
    The unit is now in configuration mode. The color and status of the Status LED turns to blinking green.
  2. Press the UI button three times.
    The Base, Up, and Down LEDs will move to a blinking amber state and blink in unison.
  3. Press and hold the UI button for three seconds to confirm the command.

Abandoning a command

  1. Wait approximately twenty seconds after entering the command (without confirming it) and the input is ignored.
  2. Exit configuration mode by pressing the UI button nine or more times.

Note: Wait sixty seconds after the last configuration change before resetting the unit. The system can take up to this long to save configuration changes to the NVRAM. Stacks can be reset immediately after the last configuration change without any loss of information.

I’ve already added the following command into my default configuration template, “no ui-button enable” and I’ll be reconfiguring every ERS 5500/5600 series switch we have installed. I would strongly suggest that folks disable this feature. If you haven’t seen the button there’s a picture of it below, the Nortel logo is the actual button.

ui-button

Cheers!

Nortel ERS 5500 Software 5.1.5 Available

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Nortel has released software 5.1.5 for the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series switches. There are no new features in the software release but a number of fixes.

  • When unknown multicast no flood filter was enabled the multicast packets used by OSFP were blocked (Q02007873)
  • Uplink fiber port was set to “Custom” instead of “Enabled” after code upgrade to 5.1.3 (Q02023262)
  • Stack did not properly pass MIB values for Auth-Status (Q02011169)
  • HTTP web-server crashed when running specific security test (Q02004709)
  • Under certain conditions, when a new MLT was configured, traffic did not properly flow through both links of the MLT (Q02011420)
  • Link did not come up when specific SFPs were used on (Q01966044)
  • SSH login accepted any username except blank (Q02010762)
  • Exception Error with Data Access Task Name “tIdt” (Q02024889)

You can find the release notes at the Nortel website.

Cheers!
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And the winner is – Avaya

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avaya-thumbAs with the sale of Nortel’s wireless division, Avaya is now the “stalking horse” for the enterprise division. I had heard that Avaya had walked away from the table but I guess for $475 million it’s too cheap to resist.

With the overlap of voice solutions I’m really curious how this will play out with the voice solutions. As for the networking components I don’t believe Avaya has much of anything so it should certainly help them sell complete solutions.

Cheers!

References;

http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&oid=100259133&locale=en-US
http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/corporate/pressroom/pressreleases/2009/pr-090720.htm
http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/07/20/mike-z-s-zmail-about-nortels-enterprise-sale/
http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/07/20/nortel-to-sell-enterprise-business-to-avaya/

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