VMware Communities: Message List - VMware flooding network with LLC broadcast messages

Re: VMware flooding network with LLC broadcast messages

Brijn — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:31:09 GMT

Hi,

Absolutely!

Three HP BL465c blades in a HP c3000 (aka Shorty) enclosure. Blades run ESX 3.5 (latest). Blades are connected to (the internal ports) a GbE2c HP switch blade (two in chassis for redundancy). The blade switches are connected via a 2G trunk to a netgear core switch. From there a bunch of other switches are connected. No vlan's etc.

Virtual center runs on a 4th blade (same HW, but no second CPU) in the enclosure.

A total of 11 VM's: Most Windows 2003, two Linux ones. Using the RVTools utility that I just discovered I can see that the MAC listed in the capture are NOT VM Guest MAC's (RVtools shows the guest MAC's, unfortunately not the actual host MAC's)

Bas

Re: VMware flooding network with LLC broadcast messages

mehul96 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:03:23 GMT

Could you tell us a bit more about you environment? Like How many ESX servers and how are they wired? With Virtual Center? How many VMs and their operating systems?

VMware flooding network with LLC broadcast messages

Brijn — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:33:43 GMT

Hello,

Walking past a switch today I noticed all the lights blinking at a very high rate. We where not doing any Ghost multicasts, so there should not be that many broadcasts in our network.
Wireshark quickly showed VMWARE Mac addresses sending a huge amount of LLC messages.

Our network is very simple, one subnet, no VLAN's etc

Google and search of VMTN only returned a lot of post from people working at LLC's

1) Is it normal to see that many LLC messages
2) what is their function
3) can I do anything to reduce it

Tx!
Bas