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houghtp
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Contributor

ESX 5.5 - vSwitch Failback

Hi,

We have an issue with a failed switch that is being replaced tonight. I've been looking at the failback options all our vSwitches and I'm a bit confused by the failback setting.

Looking a the official docs, :

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-55-network...

From the Failback drop-down menu, determine whether a physical adapter is returned to active status

after recovering from a failure.


If failback is set to Yes (default), the adapter is returned to active duty immediately upon recovery,

displacing the standby adapter that took over its slot, if any.


If failback is set to No to a standard port, a failed adapter is left inactive after recovery until another

currently active adapter fails and must be replaced.

So, Failback set to no should mean exactly that, although I've done some testing and this doesn't seem to be the case?

Our nics are set to Active/Active and we are load balancing via Port ID, we have Failback set to No. When I simulate a failed network card by pulling a cable, viewing network stats via ESXTOP, I can see all VM's on NIC0 fail over to NIC1. When I re insert the cable, again via ESXTOP I see all those VM's fail back to NIC0.

I've seen a few other discussions on the boards around this, but they seem to focus more on when you run Active/Standby configuration, i've evens seen some say Failback only applies to this situation?

Can anyone shed some light? Am i missing something?

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