HP ProLiant 4500 Compaq ProLiant Cluster HA/F100 and HA/F200 Administrator Gui - Page 48

Designing the Compaq ProLiant Clusters HA/F100 and HA/F200 2-17 Example 1 A Compaq dual-port NIC and a single-port NIC are used in this example. The first port of the dual-port NIC is a dedicated interconnect, and the second port is the backup path for the cluster-to-LAN network. The single-port NIC is configured as the primary network path for cluster-to-LAN communication. The Compaq Advanced Network Control Utility is used to configure the second port on the dual-port NIC as the backup port of a redundant pair. The single port on the other NIC is configured to be the primary port for cluster-to-LAN communication. The interconnect retains its fully redundant status when MSCS is configured to use the other network ports as interconnect backup. Failure of the primary interconnect path results in intracluster communications occurring over the single-port NIC, since it was configured in MSCS as the backup for intracluster communication. If the entire dual-port NIC fails, the cluster nodes still have a working communication path over the single-port NIC. With this configuration, even a failure of the dual-port NIC results in the transfer of the cluster-to-LAN communication to the single-port NIC. Other than a failure of the network hub, the failure of any cluster network component will be resolved by the redundancy of this configuration. Node 1 Primary Interconnect Path Node 2 Primary Cluster to LAN and Backup Interconnect Path Backup Cluster to LAN and Backup Interconnect Path Hub Clients Figure 2-8. Use of dual-port NICs to increase redundancy