Hey Everyone,
We are getting ready to purchase 6 new HP DL380 Gen9 servers to act as ESXi hosts. On the quote, our vendor has included an HPE FlexFabric 534FLR. This does not include any transceiver modules, and so I was given the task of figuring out exactly everything that we need. And here is where I am lost.
In our environment, we have a Brocade VDX 6720 for our network and a Brocade 5100 for our SAN. In terms of cards, our other hosts have a QLogic BR-1020 CNA for 10 GE and a QLogic 2462.
My questions are thus:
1.) Are transceiver brands largely interchangeable? I'm inclined to go with the HPE 534FLR, will this accept a Brocade 10GE SFP+ SR module?
2.) A new QLogic 2462 w/ 2 modules costs $1478.29, whereas HP's recommended H2412 costs $322.18 w/o the modules,but is a 12 Gbps card. If I put a 4 Gbps module, will it sufficiently downgrade? Could I put a 12 Gbps module on the card, and an 8 Gbps module on the 5100?
3.) Could I just throw in 2 BR-1020 cards, use one for network and the other for SAN? Can I split the ports on a single card and have one port for network and the other for the SAN fabric?
If anyone could help me out, that would be awesome. I'm trying to get familiar with the terms and specs, but I'm completely lost when it comes to determining what can connect with what.