I need to have a question answered to be sure I understand this correctly.

If you have a etherchannel trunk of 2 ports (1Gb port each) on the pSwtich and plugged the cables like this to the modules.
One cable in enc1,bay1,x1(active).
One cable in enc1,bay2,x1(standby).

Then you’re able to receive a total throughput of 2Gb inbound traffic and VC will then pass traffic to a given bay(server). But since Outbound traffic will be redirected and send through an active uplink, the total throughput would be 1Gb for Outbound traffic since you only have one active uplink (bay1,x1).

I guess I am totally wrong but I hope you can help me understand.

I can provide some insight here:

What will happen if the VMkernel decides to use that nic to send IO?

All VC modules within the same domain should be connected via either the built-in midplane connection or via the CX4 interconnect cables. A VC domain can span up to 16 VC devices (interconnect modules), so it is possible to have multiple enclosures within a single VC domain, all sharing the same SUS.

The VMkernel can ship packets to any vmnic without worrying whether there is an uplink path – as long as one path of the SUS is available, you’ll have joy.

Is the Flexnic aware of the standby status of it “native” uplink?

The FlexNIC doesn’t care about the status of any of the uplinks. It’s the job of the Flex-10 interconnect module to direct traffic to the correct (available) uplink.

Will it send data to the uplink of the VC module it’s connected to or will it send data to the active uplink?

A FlexNIC will always send data to its connected VC module. It’s then up to the VC module to figure out what to do with it.

How is this done? Will it send the IO through the midplane or CX-4 cable to the VC module with the active uplink?

The FlexNIC sends traffic to its hard-wired VC interconnect module. From there, it may be redirected through one (or more) additional VC interconnects to reach an available active uplink.

And if this occurs what will be the added latency of this behavior?

Not 100% sure, but logic would indicate that, since the data is being passed through multiple devices, there is some additional latency, even if it is minimal.

HP describes the standby status as blocked, what does this mean?

Inbound traffic (from the pSwitch) will be accepted; however, the assumption is being made that all uplinks within a SUS are part of the same LACP domain. This means that it is perfectly happy (and within its rights) to send response frames back on any uplink port within the SUS.

Will virtual connect discard IO send to the standby IO, will it not accept IO and how will it indicate this?

Since the VC domain is responsible for directing traffic out an available active uplink port, the only way that I/O could be lost is if all uplinks are down.

An additional note on Smart Link…the last project I worked on with VC (Jan 2010), HP strongly recommended that we NOT use Smart Link with ESX. Much better to let the VC fabric figure out what to do with the traffic internally rather than having ESX try to interpret upstream status.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the PingBack!
KLC

This means that if the packet is sent to the passive one, it will just go through the internal switch of the C7000/C3000 to the active virtual connect (the one that has the active uplink).

So esx can either loabalance on all the physical interfaces configured for the vmkernel or virtual switch, all packets will go finaly to the active uplink without any trouble.

When your vitual connect switches are not on the same line, then you have dedicated 10 Gb links from HP that can be purchased to chain them and have the same result.

It seems that the link sections did not appear in the orginal post. I’ve added the links, including the cookbook.

It seems that the link sections did not appear in the orginal post. I’ve added the links, including the cookbook.