N1 Provisioning Server Configuration and Connections Overview

This section provides a list of the supported N1 Provisioning Server configurations, the requirements for each type of connection in an I-Fabric, a summary of the chassis SSC connections, and the naming conventions used for connections.

N1 Provisioning Server Supported Configurations

The following N1 Provisioning Server configurations are supported:

• One Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis with a single Switch and System Controller (SSC). An external switch is not required, but is recommended.

• One blade system chassis with two SSCs. An external control plane switch and an external data plane switch is required.

• Two or more chassis. An external control plane switch and an external data plane switch is required.

Required Connection Information

The following information is required for each connection.

Table 3–1 Connection Information

Information	Description
Starting Device ID	The device ID of the starting device
Starting Port	Identifies the port in the starting device
Ending Device ID	The device ID of the ending device
Ending Device Port	Identifies the port of the ending device

Chassis Switch and System Controller (SSC) Connections

The following diagram illustrates the physical connections of a single SSC.

Figure 3–1 B1600 Switch and System Controller (SSC) Connections: Physical View

The SSC connections are as follows:

• 1 – RS232 serial console port

• 2 – 10/100 Base-T network management port, referred to as the NETMGT port

• 3 – 10/100/1000 Base-T data network ports, referred to as NETP0 to NETP3 from left to right on the bottom row, and as NETP4 through NETP7 from left to right on the top row

The following diagram shows the representative connections of a chassis with two SSCs. The diagram shows only those connections used by the N1 Provisioning Server software, and is used in the following sections to illustrate the connections required for the three supported configurations.

Figure 3–2 B1600 Switch and System Controller (SSC) Connections: Logical View

Connection Port Naming

The following table shows the port naming used in the following sections for the servers, switches, and chassis SSC devices.

Table 3–2 Device Port Naming

Logical Port Name	Role
eri0	Control plane server connection to the control plane switch for the Service Processor (SP), control plane database (CPDB), and Control Center (CC) provisioning command transfer.  Note – In a single chassis-single SSC installation with no external switch, eri0 connects to the NETMGT port of the SSC.
eri1	Control plane server connection to the local intranet. The Control Center Management PC is usually connected to the local intranet.
ce0/skge0	Control plane server gigabit connection to the data plane switch for operating system image flash and JumpStart installations for server blades
NETMGT	Chassis switch and system controller connection to the control plane switch for provisioning command transfer.
NETP0	Chassis switch and system controller gigabit connection to the data plane switch for operating system image flash and JumpStart installations for server blades
NETP1	Chassis switch and system controller gigabit connection to a separate image server if an external data plane switch is not used.
NETP1 through NETP6	Unused chassis switch and system controller connections.
NETP7	Uplink when the installation does not have a data plane switch. See Figure 3–3.

• The Wiring Mark-up Language (WML) file contains the logical port name. The table shows only the physical name for each type of connection. Gigabit Ethernet connections are recorded in WML as eth0, eth1, or ethN.

• The gigabit Ethernet card is designated ce0/skge0, and can be either the Sun GigaSwift card (ce) or the SysKonnect card (skge0). If you select a card made by another vendor this designation might change. Control plane servers can also have a Gigabit Ethernet card.

Connecting a Separate Image Server

The image server can be any machine that supports a network file server (NFS) access. The image server must have at least one 10/100 Base T Ethernet network interface card (NIC), and one 10/100/1000 VLAN-capable gigabit NIC. The Provisioning Server control plane software is set to use the default image server user account root with the password root that has read and write access for NFS. The image server username and password are configurable during installation. You must set up the image server with telnetd allowing access as user root and password root.

The N1 image server 10/100 Base T port must be connected to the control plane switch, and the 10/100/100 NIC port must be connected to the data plane switch.