HP Virtual Connect for the Cisco Network Administrator

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NIC ports in the team, but does not support Switch-assisted Load Balancing (SLB). For Linux, VC
supports any NIC bonding type that does not require 802.3ad (static or dynamic using LACP) on
the server NIC ports.
Virtual Connect also supports a feature called “SmartLink” that is enabled on vNets used by
servers with NIC Teaming\bonding enabled. The SmartLink feature will disable the VC
downlinks (server NIC ports) whenever all the VC uplinks for the associated vNet have a link
failure. Basically, the SmartLink feature propagates a link-down event of a vNet‟s uplinks to the
server NICs in the team. This allows the NIC Teaming software to failover from one vNet (where
all the uplinks have failed) to another vNet with functional uplinks. SmartLink is only used in NIC
Teaming configurations when the NIC ports in the Team are connected to different VC modules.
HP recommends that SmartLink only be enabled on a vNet if ALL server NIC ports assigned to
the vNet are using NIC Teaming and are connected to at least one other vNet.
For additional information on NIC Teaming for Windows, see link in the “Additional
Resources” section at the end of this paper.
Virtual Connect and Cisco Terminology Comparison
In addition to using many traditional networking terms, Virtual Connect also introduces some
new networking terminology. Some new terms are needed to properly describe VC‟s
functionality since VC represents a new way of interconnecting blade servers to the core
network. To aid in quickly understanding these Virtual Connect networking terms, the following
table compares VC and Cisco networking terms.
Table 1. Virtual Connect and Cisco Port Trunking and VLAN Trunking Terminology Comparison