HP Virtual Connect 4Gb Fibre Channel Module for c-Class BladeSystem 409513-B22 Dépliant

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Designing an HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Architecture for 
VMware vSphere 

In this section, we will discuss two different and viable strategies for customers to choose from.  Both 
provide flexible connectivity for hypervisor environments.  We will provide the pros and cons to each 

approach, and provide you with the general steps to configure the environment. 

 
Designing a Highly Available Flex-10 Network Strategy with Virtual 
Connect Managed VLANs 

In this design, two HP ProLiant c-Class 7000 Enclosures with Virtual Connect Flex-10 modules are 

stacked to form a single Virtual Connect management domain

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.  By stacking Virtual Connect Ethernet 

modules, customer can realize the following benefits: 

 

Management control plane consolidated 

 

More efficient use of WWID, MAC and Serial Number Pools 

 

Provide greater uplink port flexibility and bandwidth 

 

Profile management across stacked enclosures 

Shared Uplink Sets provide administrators the ability to distribute VLANs into discrete and defined 

Ethernet Networks (vNet.)  These vNets can then be mapped logically to a Server Profile Network 

Connection allowing only the required VLANs to be associated with the specific server NIC port.  This 

also allows customers the flexibility to have various network connections for different physical 
Operating System instances (i.e. VMware ESX host and physical Windows host.) 
As of Virtual Connect Firmware 2.30 release, the following Shared Uplink Set rules apply per 

domain: 

 

320 Unique VLANs per Virtual Connect Ethernet module 

 

128 Unique VLANs per Shared Uplink Set 

 

28 Unique Server Mapped VLANs per Server Profile Network Connection 

 

Every VLAN on every uplink counts towards the 320-VLAN limit. If a Shared Uplink Set is 

comprised of multiple uplinks, each VLAN on that Shared Uplink Set is counted multiple times. 

By providing two stacked Enclosures, this will allow for not only Virtual Connect Ethernet module 
failure, but also Enclosure failure. The uplink ports assigned to each Shared Uplink Set (SUS) were 

vertically offset to allow for horizontal redundancy purposes, as shown in Figure 1-2. 
The IP Storage vNet (NFS and/or iSCSI) has been designed for dedicated access.  This design 

approach provides administrators to dedicate a network (physically switched, directly connected or 
logical within a Shared Uplink Set) to provide access to IP-based storage arrays.  Directly connecting 

an IP-based Storage array has certain limitations: 

 

Each storage array front-end port will require a unique vNet 

 

Each defined vNet will require separate server network connections 

 

You are limited to the number of IP-based arrays based on the number of unassigned uplink 

ports 

                                                 

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 Only available with Virtual Connect Manager Firmware 2.10 or greater.  Please review the Virtual Connect Manager Release Notes for more 

information regarding domain stacking requirements: