The HP XC System Software supports the use of port trunking on the ProCurve switches to create a higher bandwidth connection between the Root Administration Switches and the Branch Administration Switches as well as the Super Root Switch and the Root Administration Switches, in the case of a large-scale HP XC system.
For physically small platforms (such as a 1U HP ProLiant DL145 server), a large number of servers (more than 30) can be placed in a single cabinet, and are all attached to a single branch switch. The branch switch is a ProCurve Switch 2848, and two-port trunking is used for the connection between the Branch Administration Switch and the Root Administration Switch.
For physically larger platforms (2U and larger) such the HP Integrity rx2600 and HP ProLiant DL585 servers, a smaller number of servers can be placed in a single cabinet. In this case, the branch switch is a ProCurve Switch 2824, which is sufficient to support up to 19 nodes.
In this release, the HP XC System Software supports the use of one-wire connections or two-wire trunks between the Root Administration Switches and the Branch Administration Switches. The HP XC System Software supports the use of a one-wire connection or up to an eight-wire trunk between the Super Root Switch and the Root Administration Switch of each region. In most installations, four-wire trunks are used.
It is important to know that the trunks must be configured on both switches before plugging the cables in between the switches. Otherwise, a loop is created between the switches, and the network is rendered useless.
Because of the architecture of the ProCurve switch, the HP XC System Software uses only 10 ports of each 12 to ensure maximum bandwidth through the switch. Thus, a configuration restriction of trunking on the ProCurve switch is that the trunk must exist within the 12 port segment. As a result, in order to configure a ProCurve 2848 Super Root Switch for 3 regions using four-wire trunks, the following ports are used for each region:
Region 3 - Ports 13,14,15,16
Ports 9,10,11, and 12 in this case are not used
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