esxi and cisco 2960 can't get etherchannel going

[nappyrat]

Hello,

I have a Dell Poweredge T610 running ESXi 4.1 and a Cisco Catalyst 2960 running IOS 1.5.  I have been trying to get a etherchannel working with load balancing but whenever i have both network cables plugged in, the ip of the host becomes unreachable.  If I only have 1 cable plugged in everything works fine.

On ESXi i have the 2 onboard nics added to a vswitch, although I have tried using a separate pci card with the same results.  In the vSwitch configuration I have Load balancing set for "Route based on IP hash".  That is the only thing I have modified at all on a fresh esxi install

On a pretty vanilly c2960, I have the 2 ports port channeled like this

interface GigabitEthernet0/10
 channel-group 2 mode on
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/11
 channel-group 2 mode on

I have the following load balance type

switch#sh etherchannel load-balance 
EtherChannel Load-Balancing Configuration:
        src-dst-ip

When both cables are connected, the port channel looks like this

switch#sh int po2
Port-channel2 is up, line protocol is up (connected) 
  Hardware is EtherChannel, address is a0cf.5b37.f18b (bia a0cf.5b37.f18b)
  MTU 1500 bytes, BW 2000000 Kbit/sec, DLY 10 usec, 
     reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
  Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
  Keepalive set (10 sec)
  Full-duplex, 1000Mb/s, link type is auto, media type is unknown
  input flow-control is off, output flow-control is unsupported 
  Members in this channel: Gi0/10 Gi0/11 
  ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
  Last input never, output 00:00:01, output hang never
  Last clearing of "show interface" counters never
  Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 201
  Queueing strategy: fifo
  Output queue: 0/40 (size/max)
  5 minute input rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec
  5 minute output rate 1000 bits/sec, 3 packets/sec
     204611082 packets input, 249998258846 bytes, 0 no buffer
     Received 7725 broadcasts (3507 multicasts)
     0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles
     0 input errors, 0 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored
     0 watchdog, 3507 multicast, 0 pause input
     0 input packets with dribble condition detected
     264997578 packets output, 334029285510 bytes, 0 underruns
     0 output errors, 0 collisions, 1 interface resets
     0 unknown protocol drops
     0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred
     0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier, 0 pause output
     0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out

But at this point I cannot ping the IP of the esxi box.  If I run a test management network from the esxi box, I get random results.  Like the default gateway will fail, but the dns will succeed even though they're all on the same subnet.  then if i run it again it will fail on everything. 

I have reproduced this now with several servers and switches, so i knwo it's not a hardware issue, but I just can't figure out where my config is wrong.  Anyone have pointers?

[a_p_]

You may want to compare your settings with the sample configuration provided at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004048 to see whether a detail is missing.

André

[vGerry]

I DO NOT KNOW IF U STILL HAVE  THIS PROBLEM,IF YES TRY TO PUT ON CISCO: MODE ACTIV.

ALSO IN DELL U HAVE TO SET MODE ACTIVE.

I HOPE IT IS GOOD.

ANYWAY NOW VMWARE 5.1 SUPPORTS LACP.

REGARDS