•Any switch port can be used to perform switch management and PXE.

Diagnostic tools

The hardware, software, and firmware diagnostic tools that are available include:

•HP Systems Insight Manager automatic discovery and identification

•POST built into the switch boot process

•Switch port mirroring

•Switch LED panel displaying per port status and speed

•System, management, and option compatibility status LEDs

•Rear panel reset power switch and DB-9 management serial port

•Statistic monitoring including port utilization, data packets received/transmitted, port error packets, trunk utilization, and so on

•Ping and trace route capability

•Remote syslog with support for primary and secondary syslog server

•The ability to return the switch to known good condition in case of firmware corruption

•State information dump for tuning and debugging switch performance

•Panic command for immediate state dump to flash memory and automatic switch boot

•Ability to set NVRAM diagnostic flags

Switch architecture

The HP c-Class BladeSystem provides Ethernet switching technology for network cable reduction.

The switch does not affect or determine NIC enumeration and the associated mapping of NIC interfaces to switch ports. The numbering of the NICs on the server (for example, NIC 1, NIC 2, NIC 3) is determined by the server type, the server operating system, and what NICs are enabled on the server.

Port Mapping

For detailed port mapping information, see the HP BladeSystem enclosure installation poster or the HP BladeSystem enclosure setup and installation guide on the HP website (http://www.hp.com/go/bladesystem/documentation).

Dual switches

In a dual switch configuration, two switches in the server blade enclosure provide switch redundancy and redundant paths to the network ports on the server blades. Each switch has five external Gigabit Ethernet ports and sixteen internal Gigabit Ethernet ports providing connectivity to the blade servers within the enclosure.

Each pair of switches consolidates up to thirty-two Gigabit Ethernet signals into one-to-ten Gigabit ports (on the back of the enclosure).

Redundant crosslinks

In a dual switch configuration, the two switches are connected through redundant Gigabit crosslinks. These two crosslinks provide an aggregate throughput of 2 Gb/s for traffic between the switches.

These crosslinks are disabled by default. The crosslinks must be enabled for use.

Introduction 9