Networking Question: How to get 2GB connection to ESX servers?

[JasonVmware]

Hello all,

I am currently working with a IBM H chasis blade server with H21 blades. They currently only have 2 nics in them but the plan is to go to four eventually. The current setup is the blades map to a nortel switch that does not support Etherchannel and the ports from the nortel switches run to Cisco 3750's which have ports etherchanneled. The problem is in this setup I can get 2GB out but will only get 1GB into the blade. If I put a pass through model in to replace the nortel swtich which will essentially pass the nics right through to the Cisco 3750's which have etherchanne setup how would I setup ESX to enable 2GB channel in? do I have to do any special traffic shaping like IP-has or MAC or is the default Originating port based on ID good enough? Also if the setup does work will it show the NIC on the VM's as a 2GB connection?

Same question would go for normal servers if you had 2 normal servers with 2 nics teamed and Cisco switch with etherchannel setup how would you setup ESX to use the full 2GB connection?

Any advice would help.

[weinstein5]

You would have to assign both physical nics to a single vswitch and then configure load balancing on the virtual switch - there are three types of load balancing on the switch Source MAC, vswitch port based and IP Based or IP Hash - they wrok like this:

• vswitch port based - based on the vswitch port the virtual nic (can be a virtual nic in a VM, service console port or vmkernel port) the vmkernel will choose which physical nic the traffic will go out - so you can see the outbound bandwidth will have maximum of 1 GB - this does not require etherchannel

• Source MAC based - based on the MAC address of the virtual NIC (can be a virtual nic in a VM, service console port or vmkernel port) the vmkernel will choose which physical nic the traffic will go out -
  so you can see the outbound bandwidth will have maximum of 1 GB - this does not require etherchannel

• IP Based - the vmkernel will examin everyoutbound IP packet and will select a physical NIC to send the traffice out - The virtual NIC (can be a virtual nic in a VM, service console port or vmkernel port) can in eessence go out any physical NIC givig a theoretical maximum og 2 GB in your case - this requires etherchannel

So IP Hash would be the way to go -

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[JasonVmware]

Okay so I would have to get a pass through module to make sure my nics have a direct connection to the etherchanneled ports on my Cisco switch then.

Even though with IP-Has would do 2g woudl the virtual nic on the Vm only show 1g still or 2g? its not really important as long as its really getting the 2g bandwidth, just wondering tho?

Is there any drawbacks to the IP-hash packet shapping? and I though IP-Has only worked if you had stacked switches?

[mcowger]

The VM will always show 1Gb connection, eve if its uplink is faster or slower.

No real downsides to IP Hash if your switching design can handle it.

--Matt

[JasonVmware]

They can Theoreticly use any nic but only 1 nic at time? there is no way to get an active/active session yet so you will with out a doubt be able to utalize the 2GB of bandwidth ?

With IP-Hash it still sounds like it can use 2GB worth of bandwidth but only if multiple jobs are requesting it as 1 nic is always selected for the job. So in a backup situation if your backup starts and pics nic1 nic2 will do nothing untill another job requests it? or will nic2 pickup some of the slack to increase the speed?

I have some VM's with a lot of data on them and I need the fastest way possible to get backups done on these VM's without taking a image level backup. If I have to go to a image level backup I will, but I would like to find another solution. Currently 1GB is not enough bandwidth.

[mcowger]

With IP hash, any given TCP session (src/dst/src-port/dst-port combo) will max out at 1GBit.

--Matt

[JasonVmware]

Hmmm I guess there is no real way to get 2GB speed then? or anyway to make my backups happen faster?

[Ken_Cline]

Hmmm I guess there is no real way to get 2GB speed then?

Use a 10Gb infrastructure :smileygrin:

or anyway to make my backups happen faster?

Use VCB and backup at SAN speeds.

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers

TVAR Solutions, A Wells Landers Group Company

VMware Communities User Moderator

[JasonVmware]

If I have to backup my files with a file level backup I guess there is the only way to get 2GB or more is to upgrade all the modules on the blade to 10GB ?

[depping]

That would be the solution at the moment. Although i can imagine that the upcoming cisco vswitch will solve this "problem".

Duncan

Blogging:

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[Ken_Cline]

VCB provides file-level backup for Windows VMs, but nothing else...

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers

TVAR Solutions, A Wells Landers Group Company

VMware Communities User Moderator