HP VirtualConnect and Cisco Nexus Integration:

We get a lot of questions asking us about the integration of Cisco Nexus with HP Blades, specifically the VirtualConnect technology, also known as Flex10 or FlexFabric.  Not only does the integration work, it also provides a very robust converged network (both SAN and LAN) taking advantage of both technology strengths.  With Nexus, you can utilize the vPC feature to create a virtual logical switch domain and incorporate the bonding policies in the global vPC catalog for both ingress and egress communication to the VirtualConnect modules.  While the VC modules cannot participate in the vPC, can create highly resilient fabrics that provide redundancy and IOPS.

This diagram below shows the environment configuration. There are two Nexus 5010 switches, One HP Blade Enclosure with two Virtual Connect Flex-10 modules. The uplink port (blue) in VC 1/1 is connected to Nexus SW1, Port 1/13: and uplink VC 1/2 (blue) is connected to Nexus SW2 Port 1/13. These ports are configured as PortChannel Po12. The uplink port (red) VC 2/1 is connected to Nexus SW1 Port, 1/14 and uplink VC 2/2 (red) ,is connected to Nexus SW2 Port 1/14. These ports are configured as PortChannel Po13. 


The cookbook at the link below provides the specific NX-OS commands and the compatible bonding policies and settings for HP VC:
HP VC and Cisco Nexus Integration

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