VC, SUS, vNet, VLANs and a partridge...

So, recently I've been doing a lot of research on Virtual Connect, primarily because I've recently purchased some!

I've bought the following:

1.  HP c3000 BladeSystem chassis
2. 2 x HP 1/10GB Virtual Connect Ethernet modules
3. 2 x Cisco 3020 Blade switches (wouldn't SwitchBlades sound cooler?!) for mezz 2 for storage connectivity (ISCSI/NFS).
4. 8 x bl460c G1 blades for ESX and Hyper-V hosts...and maybe some other nonsense.

This will happily replace my 7!!! DL360G5's and use less power, produce less heat and make less noise...well maybe not the last.  BUT it will do the first 2 which saves money!

On to the point of this post...

In trying to understand the joys of Virtual Connect magic, I acquired the HP Virtual Connect Ethernet Cookbook which can also be found here (along with other supposedly useful bits).

After reading thru this and analyzing the differences in the scenarios I've come up with these differences and explanations:

Virtual Connect

Its like a switch with its legs cut off...but it feels like a bridge except it has more then an in and out port, but maybe not really if you consider you setup virtual connections inside it from each blade out to the external net...so maybe many bridges virtually layered? Or just a switch that looks like a single contact point to an upstream switch (no spanning tree).  Or maybe it's a switch that won't participate in a Spanning Tree.  Bottom-line...its Virtual Connect!

vNet vs SUS

This was the harder one and really the juice of the VC for me to understand how to pass VLANs. Here's my simplest explanation.

• vNet = Check a box to Tunnel VLAN traffic and it will pass all traffic as it is received...it dumbly hands it from one interface to the other never looking inside the envelope.
• SUS = Is all nosey and analyzes VLAN traffic and is told whether Adam's Left hand (Blade A, onboard NIC 1) is allowed to see all the VLANs or only VLAN 0 or 101 or 0 AND 101-104; or his Right hand (Onboard NIC 2) can see this versus that.  And then Brenda's Left hand (Blade B port 0) can see this or that, etc.  Ok, that wasn't simple.  Basically, with SUS, you can determine exactly what VLANs (including 0) are mapped to exactly which blade ports (if not ALL or NONE).

So really SUS allows you much more granularity on your traffic...if you want it.

So for all those Virtual Connect experts out there...I invite more in depth or probably more accurate explanations  as I couldn't really find just that...vNet vs SUS for dummies.

Enjoy.