Teaming on ESXi 4.0U1

[KJDzikowicz]

Ive got Dual onboard network ports on my server.

I see that ESX supports NIC teaming, but from what ive read, it only supports failover.

Does ESXi Support Link Aggregation?

My gigabit Switch is LACP ready and i would like to Bond 2 GBE channels together.

Also, if it does suport LACP, how strong is the VSwitch's fabric? Will it only switch 1GB worth of data or does it expand as needed?

Thanks.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Teaming that ESX/ESXi supports is really more of a load distribution - the default is Load Balancing by Virtual Port ID - which based on the virtual port the vmkernel will choose which physical NIC that the VM will go out - so with this method all traffic will leave a single physical NIC so no need for LACP on the physical switch. There is another method where the NIC is chosen base don the virtual machines virtual MAC Address - the third method is IP Hash - where the outgoing packet is examined and based on the originating and destination IP addresses are examined and based on these one of the physical NICs is selected for the outbound traffic - this method will require LACP on the physical switch - but the these NICs are not necessary bonded to form a 2 GB pipe -

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[KJDzikowicz]

The single 2 GB pipe is what i was looking for. There will not be too much outgoing traffic on these machines, but i will have loads of incoming traffic. All my storage is CIFS shares over IP from a seperate NAS unit. The NAS can saturate a 2GB bonded channel fairly easily so i was hoping i could widen the pipe to the VSwitch fabric to give the VM's a little more headroom.

If you have any suggestions please let me know. Thanks.