Multipathing and NFS Storage

[RanjnaAggarwal]

Anyone who can explain this attached diagram and these terms given below:-

1. spanned, teamed switch ports

(feature may not be available on all switches)

2. cross stack EtherChannel

3. switch port static or dynamic link aggregation

4. what is the use of stacked switches in this diagram because from each host connection goes only to single switch.

[chriswahl]

This picture is a bit goofy on terminology.

Ranjna Aggarwal wrote:

Anyone who can explain this attached diagram and these terms given below:-

1. spanned, teamed switch ports

(feature may not be available on all switches)

A virtual port channel - ports on multiple switches acting as one logical switch

2. cross stack EtherChannel

See #1

3. switch port static or dynamic link aggregation

Various types of EtherChannels - either LACP (dynamic) or On (static). Any EtherChannel being presented directly to a vSphere host must be On (static)

4. what is the use of stacked switches in this diagram because from each host connection goes only to single switch.

It should be across diverse switches, unless the Etherchannel doesn't support it (as with some Cisco 2K configurations).

Also, I've written quite a few articles on NFS load balancing:

http://wahlnetwork.com/2012/04/27/nfs-on-vsphere-technical-deep-dive-on-multiple-subnet-storage-traf...

[rickardnobel]

Ranjna Aggarwal wrote:

Anyone who can explain this attached diagram and these terms given below:-

1. spanned, teamed switch ports

(feature may not be available on all switches)

2. cross stack EtherChannel

3. switch port static or dynamic link aggregation

4. what is the use of stacked switches in this diagram because from each host connection goes only to single switch.

Unfortunately that page in the ICM 5 course is not very good and the text is, in my opinion, not correct at all.

Both the text and the picture slide claims that you should connect all cables to the same physical switch, even if having stackable switches with "Cross stack Etherchannel".

All scenarios described shows a non-redundant setup and implies that using single physical switches is a necessary and good thing.

[chriswahl]

Rickard Nobel wrote:

Unfortunately that page in the ICM 5 course is not very good and the text is, in my opinion, not correct at all.

I like your answer better, Rickard.

[kjthacker]

That diagram should be broken into two different pictures. One following the "Yes" path and one following the "No" path and both should refer to their respective path in the attached tree diagram.