Intel Modular Server – Setting up Untagged VLANs for Dedicated Compute NIC Port to External Port Must Do

We followed these instructions to set up a dedicated external port for each Compute Module NIC as we have several physical networks to work with (lab and management).

• Intel Support: Intel Modular Server: One VLAN per Compute Module, and one VLAN per external port

The catch was after completing the settings on Switch 1 everything kept working but once Switch 2’s Save Settings button was clicked on packets stopped flowing in and out of the IMS switches.

We did not, however, figure out exactly what was going on until we ran through the setup process a number of times as it turned out that one of the mezzanine network adapters has a faulty port thus contributing to the confusion.

After running through the setup process a few times we were able to replicate the problem consistently.

A call into Intel Channel Support and about 45 minutes with Christian and we had the answer:

Disable Span Tree for the external ports.

1. Click on Configure Ports
2. Change the Spanning Tree setting for the VLAN dedicated external ports
• 
3. Click Apply
4. Click on Switch 2
5. Repeat

Once we had the above two steps complete:

All four NICs showed green and our setup went live without a hitch.

We have one Compute Module running as DC and two others as Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V nodes for a 2012 failover cluster.

We then have two Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC 1U single socket servers tied to a Promise VTrak E610sD that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 set up as Hyper-V nodes for a 2008 R2 cluster.

Now that we have this networking problem figured out we can move on to our work!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

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