Network plane

The HPE Telco Blueprint networking environment includes the following switches:
  • Switches configured as part of the blueprint
    • Management switches

    • Data switches

  • Additional switch configurations that may be required on the following switches for Telco Blueprint connectivity
    • Customer infrastructure switch

    • Border Leaf switches (Customer end - Virtual Tunnel End Point)

    • Spine switches (non-VTEP)

    NOTE:

    These switch configurations are optional and depend on the data center setup.

The HPE Telco Blueprint networking environment includes two validated networking combinations. Depending on customers’ requirements, choose either the HPE FlexFabric and StoreFabric M-series switches combination or the Aruba switches combination in this blueprint.

The following table provides the switches combination validated as part of this blueprint:

Switches HPE FlexFabric and StoreFabric M-series switches combination Aruba switches combination
Management HPE FlexFabric 5900 Aruba 2540 48G 4SFP+
Data or Leaf HPE StoreFabric SN2100M ONIE Aruba 8325-48Y8C 48p
Border-Leaf   Aruba 8325-48Y8C 48p
Spine   Aruba 8325-32C 32p
NOTE:

The HPE Resource Aggregator for Open Distributed Infrastructure Management (ODIM RA) supports the Composable Fabric Manager (CFM) plugin to configure the Aruba switches.

Management switch

The management switch uses Out-of-Band Management which involves the use of dedicated channel for managing network devices.

Data or Leaf switch

For this blueprint, the data or leaf switch has been configured as the Top-of-Rack switch. Data switches support internal API, storage management, and tenant communications in NFVI. These switches are configured in High Availability (HA) mode.
IMPORTANT:

Each data switch provides five physical uplink ports per switch to the customer network. The maximum and minimum bandwidth per port are 100G and 10G respectively. The count of the uplink ports may vary with the type of data switch used.

Spine switch

Spine switches are non-VTEP switches that provide the connectivity between the Data and Border Leaf switches. Spine switches must be configured by a network administrator at the customer end only if the switches are non-Aruba. In case of Aruba switches, the configuration is automated.

Border Leaf switch

A Border Leaf switch is used for providing the north-south data traffic and connects to the WAN or outside of the fabric. Any leaf within the network follows the default route towards the Border Leaf for all external traffic (towards the Internet or a different device). A Border Leaf switch must be configured with BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) instance by a network administrator at the customer end only if the switches are non-Aruba. In case of Aruba switches, the configuration is automated.

Customer infrastructure switch

The customer infrastructure switch is positioned in the customer data center. The customer infrastructure must be configured with iLO-OOBM network (VLAN and IP interfaces) by a network administrator at the customer end to allow the HPE Management switch to communicate.

For more information about the switch hardware specifications, see HPE Telco Core Blueprint Compatibility Matrix available at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Information Library.