BladeCenter H - HS21XM 2x Nortel 1/10

[ascheale]

Hi,

we have IBM Bladecenter H and 3 HS21 XM as ESX Hosts, 2 Nortel 3/8 Ethernet Switches only for Vmotion between the 3 Hosts and 2 Nortel 1/10 Ethernet Switches.

Each ESX has 2 active NiCS on Vswitch1 for LAN connected to both Nortel 1/10. They have a LACP trunk to one (I know it´s spof ...) HP 5308 with 3x1GB.

Nortel and HP Trunk looks good.

Pings on VM´s work for 10-20 pings and get loss for a while and come back.

On HP and Nortel we see no errors.

Questions:

1) Is this the way we should do Loadbalancing ?

2) What type of loadbalancing should we set on Vswitch ?

Please see my PDF attached.

Alex

[six]

hi,

trunk between nortel & hp is okay but not neccessary if you use the preferred vmware loadbalancing method "route based on the originating virtual port ID" !

but do never use a trunk to connect esx servers to a physical switch! only use the vmware default value @ vswitch "route based on the originating virtual port ID" ! it really works fine and you don't have to configure the physical switch !

bg six

[ascheale]

You´re right.

But there will be other Baldes with Windows 2003 ...

Regards,

Alex

[six]

do you really need more performance then 1Gbit/s in the other blades with windows ? hs21 blades default have broadcom NICs and it should possible to configure failover NICTeam only ...

bg six

[ascheale]

OK, one step back.

the Nortel internal ports 1+2 which are connected to ESX1 are NOT Trunked !

Only 2 x 3EXT Ports whoch are connected to HP Switch !

Is this also no good for ESX ? I know that vSwitch do loadbalancing by itself.

Alex

[six]

ok sorry I misunderstand you ...

that's normally no problem for the esx servers ...

bg six

[ascheale]

Do you have an Idea ?

[six]

sorry I don't have a solution for you but an idea to isolate the problem:

put your vm into the network managment vlan if it exist an vlans non routed.

do many pings parallel from the vm:

to your pc (from picture), to the nortel 1/10 management ip, to the hp53xx management ip ...

is there a timeout from vm to the nortel 1/10 managment ip ?

bg six