Mac address settings – HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 10Gb Ethernet Module for c-Class BladeSystem User Manual

Page 174

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Virtual Connect server profiles 174

For more information, see "MAC address settings (on page

174

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MAC address settings

IMPORTANT:

Configuring Virtual Connect to assign server blade MAC addresses requires

careful planning to ensure that the configured range of MAC addresses is used once within the

environment. Duplicate MAC addresses on an Ethernet network can result in a server network
outage.

Each server blade Ethernet NIC ships with a factory default MAC address. The MAC address is a 48-bit

number that uniquely identifies the Ethernet interface to other devices on the network. While the hardware

ships with default MAC addresses, Virtual Connect can assign MAC addresses that override the factory

default MAC addresses while the server remains in that Virtual Connect enclosure.
Always establish control processes to ensure that a unique MAC address range is used in each Virtual

Connect domain in the environment. Reusing address ranges could result in server network outages caused

by multiple servers having the same MAC addresses.
If using Virtual Connect assigned MAC addresses, the following notes apply:

Virtual Connect automatically assigns two MAC addresses to each VC-Enet connection in the server

profile, a primary address for the Ethernet NIC, and an iSCSI MAC address for use by multifunction
gigabit server adapters, such as the HP NC373m PCI Express Dual Port Multifunction Gigabit Server

Adapter. Only the primary MAC address is used by standard (not multifunction) Ethernet devices.

If a server blade is moved from a Virtual Connect managed enclosure to a non-Virtual Connect
enclosure, the local MAC addresses on that server blade are automatically returned to the original

factory defaults.

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