This is an overview of a Flex-10 (active/active) stacked HP C7000′s for Vsphere 4.  There will be several posts following suit outlining the setup configuration….

Utilizing HP Virtual Connect and Flex-10 Networking enabled a very clean and efficient enviroment from the aspect of utilizing the two built in network loms both 10gb and providing 10GB uplinks to a core router instead of a cabling mess.

Many resources are available online to get the design that you want although in this example were veering from “the docs” to provide a separate non uplinked Vmotion and Fault Tolerance network for added security.  Since these networks can’t leave the chassis they are more secure.  From a VMware prospective we end up with 4 switches 1 standard vs for the service console allocated at 1gb with 4 uplink (1 to each flex-10 switch), 1 dVS for fault tolerance allocated with 1gb with 4 uplinks (1 to each flex-10 switch),1 dVS for vmotion allocated with 2gb with 4 uplinks (1 to each flex-10 switch), and 6gb to a dVS for VMware networks with multiple Vlans separated out for production and non-production networks.

Core Router Configuration:

Since port channel is Cisco exclusive LACP must be used the upstream configuration is fairly straight forward so we have the following scenario three networks 3 Vlans needed 1 for production VMs (Vlan 95), 1 for development VMs (Vlan 94), and 1 for management network (Vlan96 used for service console) again we won’t be creating uplinks from the Flex-10 switches for fault tolerance or VMotion so no configuration is needed.

Here is the config:

interface TenGigabitEthernet6/1
description HP Flex-10 NIC (left) Port 2
switchport
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 94,95,96
switchport mode trunk
channel-protocol lacp
channel-group 1 mode active
spanning-tree portfast edge

switchport
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 94.95.96
switchport mode trunk
spanning-tree portfast edge