HP C7000 and Nexus 5000 connectivity

[vmproteau]

We are looking at moving our ESX environment from rack mount servers to C7000 enclosures with blades. Can anyone speak to HP Blade Enclosure and Nexus 5000 compatibility? The little I'm finding seems to suggest this pairing may not be 100% ready for primetime.

I'm not to familiar with HP's Virtual Connect modules or exactly what FCoE lokks like with HP Blades. Does anyone have additional information about this specific paring or aware of this configuration being used successfully?

[julianwood · Accepted solution]

There is full compatibility between the HP 7000 and the Cisco Nexus 5000.

What you do need to ensure though is you are up to date with all HP firmware and ESX Nic Drivers.

Have a look at my blog posts which goes into this in more detail:

http://www.wooditwork.com/2010/08/09/flex-10-esx-pre-requisites/

http://www.wooditwork.com/2011/02/17/flex-10-esx-design-with-simplicity-and-scalability-part-1/

http://www.wooditwork.com/2011/02/17/flex-10-esx-design-with-simplicity-and-scalability-part-2/

http://www.wooditwork.com/2011/02/18/scripting-flex-10-esx-design-with-powercli/

http://www.wooditwork.com/2010/10/19/hp-virtual-connect-for-the-cisco-network-administrator/

[vmproteau]

This is great information Julian. We're looking at FlexFabric to connect to the Nexus 5000. I'd assume much of your Flex-10 design still applies. I was curious if you have had any experiences with the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module or could offer any opinion or addendum with respect to these interconnects.

Thanks agin for the information. I'm sure it will prove invaluable.

[Zmicier]

I was searching through internet any documentation related to connection Flex-10  to Cisco Nexus 5000 Series and found two different docs.

The first one http://bizsupport2.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02656171/c02656171.pdf is from  HP  which describes connection mechanism using Cisco Nexus 2232PP Fabric Extender

The second one  has no author but have been found on HP site as well http://h30499.www3.hp.com/hpeb/attachments/hpeb/bladescategory04/559/1/VC_Flex10_Nexus_vPC_Setup.pdf

Which one is the correct one?

Thank you for sharing any ideas.