question about nic teaming and management nic

[freakdaddy]

I just set up an esxi 6 system on an HP dl585g7 with 4 built in nics.  Worked great but I only used one of the nics and it served the management nic and to serve the hosts.  Now I want to set up to use all 4 nics.  I configured my hp 5500 switch with 4 ports as an aggregate and tagged all the vlans to them.  Not sure how to configure the management nic from the console.  Do I have to leave one of the nics out to make it a management nic?  Do I select all the nics at the console for management?

[rcporto]

This KB article shows everything you need, including the correct physical switch configuration: VMware KB: Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with ESXi...

[freakdaddy]

That link doesn't work.

[vLarus]

Are you using Static Etherchannel or LACP?

For standard switches and static:

-Configure the vSwitch in question (and its vmKernels and Portgroups) to use IP Hash and other required configurations: VMware KB: Host requirements for link aggregation for ESXi and ESX

-You will lose access to the management vmKernel at this point.

-Configure the physical switch for static Etherchannel.

-Should get access again to the management vmKernel.

If using LACP and using Distributed Switches:

Back To Basics – Migrating to Enhanced LACP (Part 3 of 9) | Mike Laverick...

[Nick_Andreev · Accepted solution]

You do not really need to use link aggregation to utilize all four NICs. vSphere uses its own load-balancing algorithms to distribute the traffic between vSwitch uplinks. You can use Ether Channels on standard vSwitches and LACP on distributed vSwitches, but that typically is not needed.

If that's the case, then simply connect all uplinks to vSwitches and you'll be able to use all four links to send/receive traffic. If you're using VLANs, make sure to assign VLAN IDs to port groups and configure trunking on the switch side.

[freakdaddy]

Link is fixed.  Thanks!

[freakdaddy]

I found this out by experimentation.  Was surprised that it worked this way!  Thanks for confirming!

[freakdaddy]

Thanks everyone for all your help!  They were all correct answers but the forums only let me click "correct answer" on one of the replies. 

[freakdaddy]

How does it decide which adapter it will use to pick up an address from dhcp for management?

[Nick_Andreev]

Glad this has been fixed now.

If you have multiple uplinks on the Standard vSwitch and NIC teaming on a port group has all uplinks configured as active, then VM can potentially use any of the uplinks.