mutliple links "online"to 1 switch without distributed switches (enterprise plus)?

[Joris85]

Hello,

IS it possible to connect a standard virtual switch with 2 uplink NICs to 1 switch, without having the distributed switches enterprise plus license, and without putting the other ethernet card on standby?

Best Regards,

Joris

[Shashi112]

Yes it is possible .. you can use both NIC as active active status .

[Joris85]

Without configuring LACP or etherchannal on the physical switch? And the entire bandwidth will be used?

It will not cause loops?

Thank you.

[ElevenB2003]

Yes, it will load balance between the 2 active NICs and not cause any issues.

[Joris85]

How is this possible? I thought if you create a double link to 1 cisco switch, you need lacp?

So there is no reason at all to put a NIC in standby, if they are connected to the same switch?

[jdptechnc]

You can have as many uplinks in your standard vSwitch as ESXi supports, and connect them to the same network if you want.  I think the default insall makes the first vmnic active the rest standby, but you can move the other adapters to active if you want.  You set this in the standard vSwitch properties on the NIC Teaming tab.  The default Load Balancing setting is "Route based on originating virtual port ID" which doesn't need etherchannel or LACP configured, the vSwitch just picks an uplink based on the virtual port the VM is connected to.

[ElevenB2003]

A vSwitch is different than a physical L2 switch.  This won't cause a loop.

[depping]

Joris85 wrote:

How is this possible? I thought if you create a double link to 1 cisco switch, you need lacp?

So there is no reason at all to put a NIC in standby, if they are connected to the same switch?

Note: If you have 2 NICs attached to a vSwitch and a Virtual Machine with a single Virtual NIC then that Virtual Machine will always only use 1 physical NIC. However, as you will have many virtual machines, you will typically see a balanced load across those two physical NICs.

[rickardnobel]

Joris85 wrote:

How is this possible? I thought if you create a double link to 1 cisco switch, you need lacp?

If you connect a vSwitch with for example two vmnic (physical NIC port) uplinks using the default "Port ID" nic teaming policy and connect to a physical switch then no LACP should / could be used.

What is actually happening is that from the physical switch point of view is that your single vSwitch will appear as two different switches, each with a certain amount of MAC addresses connected to it. This effect is created since each VM is "pinned" to a uplink vmnic and all traffic from that VM will always leave through the same interface.