Page 2 - Contents
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 28 Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3 HP c-Class BladeSystem En...
Page 3 - Introduction; Catalyst; HP c-Class BladeSystem Enclosure Overview
Design Guide Introduction This guide provides best design practices for deploying the Cisco ® Catalyst ® Blade Switch 3020 for the HP c-Class BladeSystem enclosure within the Cisco Data Center Networking Architecture. It describes the internal components of the blade-server enclosure and Cisco Catal...
Page 5 - Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 for HP; Software switching features, the Cisco Catalyst Blade
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 5 of 28 Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 for HP This section briefly describes the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 for HP and explains how the blade servers within the HP c-Class BladeSystem...
Page 6 - Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 Features; Spanning Tree; Loop Guard
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 6 of 28 Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 Features This section highlights information about the protocols and features provided by the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 that help integrate the...
Page 8 - Traffic Monitoring
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 8 of 28 Note: The IEEE 802.1w protocol is enabled by default when running spanning tree in RPVST+ or MST mode on the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020. The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 ena...
Page 9 - Link Aggregation Protocols
Design Guide Figure 5. RSPAN Example Link Aggregation Protocols Cisco Fast EtherChannel interfaces and Gigabit EtherChannel interfaces are logically bundled, and they provide link redundancy and scalable bandwidth between network devices. PAgP and LACP help automatically create these channels by exc...
Page 10 - Data Center Network Architecture; Data Center Network Components
Design Guide Figure 6. Alternative Network Configuration Data Center Network Architecture The architecture of the data center infrastructure must address the requirements necessary to create a highly available, scalable, and secure network. This section describes the basic architecture necessary to ...
Page 11 - Aggregation Layer
Design Guide Figure 7. Data Center Front-End Network Aggregation Layer The aggregation layer is a point of convergence for network traffic that provides connectivity between server farms and the rest of the enterprise. The aggregation layer supports Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions and presents an idea...
Page 12 - High Availability
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 12 of 28 Layer 2 adjacency in the server farm allows for the deployment of servers or clusters that require the exchange of information done at Layer 2 only. It also readily supports access t...
Page 13 - High Availability for the Blade Servers
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 13 of 28 link redundancy combined with a deterministic topology design to achieve application-availability requirements. Servers are typically configured with multiple NICs and dual homed to ...
Page 14 - For more information about NIC teaming, please visit:; Scalability; Number of physical ports in the aggregation and access layers; Physical Port Count
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 14 of 28 ● Network Fault Tolerance (NFT) ● Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) ● Switch Assisted Load Balancing (server load balancing [SLB]) NFT teaming creates a virtual interface by grouping the...
Page 15 - Slot Count
Design Guide Slot Count The data center infrastructure must be flexible enough to allow growth in both server capacity and service performance. Connecting a blade system directly into the aggregation layer places more significance on the number of slots available to accommodate blade-system uplinks ...
Page 16 - Management; Serial console port
Design Guide The data center core is a mechanism to replicate and horizontally scale the data center environment. In the recommended design the aggregation and access layers are regarded as a module that can be duplicated to extend the enterprise. Each data center module provides its own network ser...
Page 17 - For best practices in selecting the management VLAN, please visit:; Serial Console Port
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 17 of 28 The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 contains an additional Fast Ethernet port, which connects to the HP c-Class BladeSystem Onboard Administrator, providing OOB management using the...
Page 18 - Management Options; SNMP-based management applications; HP c-Class BladeSystem iLO Connectivity; Design and Implementation Details; Network Management Recommendations
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 18 of 28 Management Options The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 switch is manageable with the following methods: ● HTTP-based device-manager GUI ● SNMP-based management applications ● Cisco ...
Page 19 - Network Topologies Using the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020; Recommended topology:
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 19 of 28 Network Topologies Using the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 This section discusses the following physical topologies: ● Recommended topology: Classic V-shaped topology with Spannin...
Page 20 - Primary root switch failure and recovery
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 20 of 28 ● Primary root switch failure and recovery ● Secondary root switch failure and recovery These tests revealed the intricacies of fast convergence in the data center and the necessity ...
Page 21 - Configuring the Aggregate Switches
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 21 of 28 RSPAN requires a VLAN to carry the mirrored traffic to the remote destination switch. In the recommended topology, the secondary aggregation switch is the RSPAN destination, where an...
Page 22 - Additional Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 Configuration; Alternative Topology
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 22 of 28 Step 2. Allow only those VLANs that are necessary on the port channel between the aggregate and the blade switches. Use the switchport trunk allowed vlan vlanID command to configure ...
Page 24 - VLAN Configuration; Configure the primary and secondary root switches as follows:; Inter-Switch Link Configuration; Aggregate 1 to aggregate 2; Port-Channel Configuration
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 24 of 28 VLAN Configuration To configure the VLANs on the switches, complete the following tasks: Set the VTP administrative domain name and mode and create the server-farm VLANs as follows: ...
Page 25 - Trunking Configuration
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 25 of 28 (config-if)# channel-group 1 mode active Configure the passive LACP members on Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 switch A as follows: (config) # interface GigabitEthernet0/19 (config-...
Page 26 - Server-Port Configuration; considered when configuring Port Security.
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 26 of 28 Server-Port Configuration A blade server is assigned a specific port on the blade switch. This assignment is predetermined by the physical slot the blade server occupies in the enclo...
Page 27 - Server Default Gateway Configuration; Configure aggregation 2 as the standby HSRP router as follows:
Design Guide © 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 27 of 28 interface GigabitEthernet0/1 description <<** BladeServer-1 **>> switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,60 switchport mode trunk switchport...
Page 28 - RSPAN Configuration
Design Guide RSPAN Configuration RSPAN allows for remote traffic monitoring in the data center. Define source and destination sessions to mirror interesting traffic to a remote VLAN captured by network-analysis tools. Configure a VLAN for RSPAN on the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 and the aggrega...
