Installation on a IBM Blade Center
-
Hello folks,
I would like to install pfSense on a IBM Blade Center, in one of the Blades. But I really don't know how to do this. The question appears to be lame, but I don't know how to map the internal blade interfaces to the external switch. Since pfSense will need two network interfaces I can't understand how to do this in a Blade Center.
Thanks in advance,
PS: We have a Cisco CIGESM and two Server Connectivity Modules as I/O devices on the Blade Center.
-
Very brief:
Typically, each IBM blade has at least 2 onboard nics (even without mezzanine boards installed) -> the blade connects to the backplane -> the backplane connects to the I/O modules.
Given your description, it looks like your bladecenter is equipped with a CISCO Catalyst switch, so you need to configure the switch to map the vlans to the nics. The CISCO will have many internal interfaces (at least 2 per blade), and a few external. You will need to find the corresponding nics from the blade (they will represent an interface on the switch, depending on the location of the blade in the chassis), and configure the switch so they end up in the correct vlan.
If you can log into the bladecenter's MM, you can find the IBM part numbers from bladecenter, blade, and I/O module installed. Google those numbers, download the manuals. IBM has pretty good illustrations in its manuals, it should give you a better view on your setup.
hope it makes sense…