Installation of new blade in VIPRION/vCMP System

I would go provisioning network ports at switches before attach blade to chassis. After that, connect sfps and cables right after pluging the new blade on the chassis.

Dont forget that it must boot and you should level it´s TMOS version to be equal as that other 2 blades.

Management IPs should also be at the same network space.

After all this, vcmp will start syncing the guest virtual disc and then powerup it´s part of the all-slots guests.

I went through this for the first time recently. The clustering software will take care of synchronizing the software revision of the new blade to match the master, first by rsyncing the contents of /shared/images to the new blade, and then issuing the install. The new blade will likely arrive with version 10.x software, so the software install will take a few reboots. You can track the progress via the AOM or the logs.

You can successfully install the new blade without its own network interfaces; it should send traffic over the backplane. Sync traffic will also use the backplane. In my opinion, it is best to cable all your blades the same. I typically will run 2 bonded ports on each device, and then bond across the blades. (ie 2x 10gb + 2x 10gb) You obviously need to verify your switch setup can handle this; we use Nexus 5k's which are a perfect fit for Viprion.

You should configure cluster IPs on the master in addition to the management IPs, and the new blade will assume its designated IP. I specify 5 IPs in blocks for each chassis for this purpose, regardless of how many blades are installed at the time. See discusses configuring the cluster addresses, and you should have them whether you're running vCMP or not.

vCMP (to my knowledge) will only automatically sync an all-slots guest to the other blade, it will not sync single-slot guests unless you provision the guest on the other blade.

Hope you don't mind Josh but for me it is still not clear if without any interfaces connected is it useful to insert an extra blade. will the CPUs be used for example to handle traffic recieved via the other blades and send via the backplane?

I plan on having the switch interfaces configured and ready to be plugged in. They just won't be plugged in IMMEDIATELY as the blade is inserted.. perhaps 30-60seconds later. I just want to make sure there the blade won't try to start processing traffic before I can get the interfaces cabled.

@Josh - thanks for the detailed response! Ours are cabled directly to Nexus 7k's. I typically have 4x10GB for each blade (2x10 for the internal side, 2x10 for the external). Each blade also has a switchport on the "sync" or "ha" VLAN that is used for sync and network failover traffic. I don't typically interconnect individual blades together.

Thanks,

Josh

A follow up question, on same topic, is it required to connect management ports on all blades, even if we are running the vCMPs in bridged mode.

it is probably better to start a new question.