M1000E Blade Chassis Integration; Guidelines For Stacking Switches In A Blade Chassis - Dell PS4000 Configuration Manual

5 M1000e Blade Chassis Integration

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M1000e (or any 3 party blade chassis implementation) requires additional SAN design considerations.
In general, most blade integration solutions will require an external set of switches that will host the
PS Series arrays that are then uplinked to the M1000e blade enclosure I/O modules. It is recommended
that stackable blade I/O modules and external switches be utilized for all blade solutions when
possible.
Note: See the following Dell EqualLogic whitepaper for more information on integrating blade
solutions into the EqualLogic SAN infrastructures:
 Integrating Blade Solutions with the Dell EqualLogic PS Series, available at:
http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=7173

5.1 Guidelines for Stacking Switches in a Blade Chassis

Use the following guidelines for blade server integration with EqualLogic SANs.
Note: All configurations documented in this section assume that Fabric A is dedicated to client LAN
traffic and Fabric B and/or C will be used for SAN infrastructure connectivity

Blade I/O modules and external switches should be from the same vendor if possible.

As a best practice, you should consider using Blade I/O modules as host aggregation switches
only. The limited number of external ports on the blade I/O modules drastically reduces the
scalability of a SAN if arrays are directly connected them.

Stack blade I/O modules into one of two stacking architectures as described in Section 5.2 and
Section 5.3 when possible. Other configurations are possible and may be used if desired.

Stack any external switches into a single stack as described in Section 4.3.

Interconnect blade I/O stack(s) with external switch stacks via aggregated links as described in
Section 4.3.1.

Use the switch vendor preferred method for link aggregation (if all switches from same
vendor).

Use LACP for link aggregation when I/O modules and external switches are from different
vendors

Using 10GbE port options where available (See Figure 18):
If blade I/O modules are stacked:
Aggregate at least two 10GbE ports from each blade I/O module stack for redundancy
o
Distribute 10GbE links among multiple switches within each I/O module stack
o
Distribute 10GbE links evenly between all switches within the external switch stack
o
If blade I/O modules are NOT stacked:
Aggregate at least two 10GbE ports from each switch to one external switch if external
o
switches are not stacked.
Aggregate at least two 10GbE ports from each switch to two different external switches if
o
external switches are stacked.

Using 1GbE port options only if 10GbE is not available for up-linking:
If blade I/O modules are stacked:
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