Choosing NIC teaming between Active-Active & Active-Standby

[sreejith1986]

Hi All,

Please help me understand how Bandwidth management differs between Active-Active & Active-Standby NIC teaming?

Our current vlan setup is:

VLAN 100- Management

VLAN 101- Vmotion

I have Vmnic0, vmnic1 reserved for Mgmt & vmotion. Confused to make a decision between Active-standy or Active-active for these two Vmnic.

My understanding is that if Active-Active then the combined bandwidth of vmnic0,vmnic1 will be available for Vmotion & mgmt vlans.

If Active-standby , then we will be under utilising the bandwidth of vmnic used for management as traffic will be relatively low for mgmt.

Correct me if wrong.

Regards,

Sree

[MikeStoica]

"Include two or more physical NICs in a team to increase the network capacity of a distributed port group or port. Configure failover order to determine how network traffic is rerouted in case of adapter failure" - Configure NIC Teaming, Failover, and Load Balancing on a Distributed Port Group or Distributed Port

Here is an old article from Frank Denneman about designing networking for vMotion Designing your vMotion network - frankdenneman.nl

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

My understanding is that if Active-Active then the combined bandwidth of vmnic0,vmnic1 will be available for Vmotion & mgmt vlans.

Not exactly. For a combined bandwidth, you need virtual distributed switches, which allow port channeling.

With standard vSwitches - which I assume you are using - I'd go with active-standby for Mgmt, and vMotion. vMotion will easily saturate the uplink, so that it's advisable to have it on a dedicated uplink. With an active-standby configuration, both - Mgmt, and vMotion - will have their own dedicated uplink during normal operation, but with a failover option in case of a link issue.

André

[SureshKumarMuth]

1.

My understanding is that if Active-Active then the combined bandwidth of vmnic0,vmnic1 will be available for Vmotion & mgmt vlans.

The usage of NIC (vmnic) is actually depends on the load balancing policy which you have set for the port group. It generally wont combine the traffic, based on the policy set the appropriate nic will be used. In short only one nic will be used for a traffic at a time, policy will decide which nic can be used for a particular traffic. Following article gives information on load balancing policies

vSphere Documentation Center

2.If Active-standby , then we will be under utilising the bandwidth of vmnic used for management as traffic will be relatively low for mgmt.

Here, load balancing wont come into picture as it has a single active adapter. This configuration helps for availability i.e when active adapter fails standby adapter will start sending the traffic.

[TomHowarth]

The answer to this question differs depending upto the type of virtual switching you are using in your environment.

For an environment that is utilising distributed virtual switching (vDS) where port channels / LAG's / LADP's are available the Active Active is a valid option, however be advised that vMotion traffic is very chatty and can easily saturate a link.  as already mentioned Frank's post on vMotion traffic is very good.

that said, I always try to keep my vMotion traffic on dedicated links/link even in a vDS backed environment, it makes for a more stable environment.

in a stardard virtual switching environment you really do not have the option as true channel capability is not a feature of that stack and Active/Passive is really the way to go.