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 Catalyst Blade Switch 3020 and explores different methods of deployment.
HP c-Class BladeSystem Enclosure Overview
The HP c-Class BladeSystem enclosure represents the next generation of blade-server and blade- switch integration. Figure 1 shows both a front and back side view of the cabinet. The c-Class enclosure can hold up to 16 half-height servers and up to 8 switch modules. The servers are available with either Intel or AMD processors. HP also offers full-height servers with two Intel processors. Both support dual-core processors. The first two switch bays must contain Ethernet switches because the onboard LAN adapters are routed to those bays. The additional six bays are available for additional Ethernet switches, Fibre Channel switches, InfiniBand switches, or copper or fiber pass-through modules. Each full-height server contains four Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, two running each module in module slots 1 and 2. Full-height servers also have three mezzanine slots for additional I/O connections such as Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, or even more Ethernet switches.
Figure 1. Front and Back Views of HP c-Class BladeSystem Enclosure
The HP c-Class BladeSystem backplane provides power and network connectivity to the blades. The base I/O module slots house a pair of Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020s, which provide a highly available and multihomed environment wherein each server blade is attached through a Gigabit Ethernet port to each Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020. Two Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3020s within the blade enclosure connect the blade-server modules to external network devices such as aggregation layer switches. Figures 2 and 3 show the logical connections between the servers, the two internal blade switches, and the outside network.
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