Nic Teaming for HA

[WooHoo]

Hello,

When I add the second vmnic to vSwitch0 then add the portgroup for VMotion and enable the failover policy to the second pnic (vmotion) all heck breaks loose and I'm no longer able to access the cos.

So for vSwitch0 I have two pnics (COS, VMotion). I also have two portgroups on this vSwitch (Service Console and VMotion "VMkernel") The portgroup for VMotion is indeed ticked for VMotion and there is NO failover policy too vmnic0 (COS), I take vmnic0 and place it in the never use section. The COS is set to failover to vmnic1 upon link failure and I have moved vmnic1 in the standby section, along with Rolling set to No and Notify Switch set to yes.

All seems fine until I reboot the ESX server and $hit hits the fan and I'm no longer able to access this server.

So is what I'm doing doable or should I be doing something else for HA?

I was thinking of just having one vSwitch for the main COS and making another vSwitch for the backup COS and VMotion. But if I do that will it work??

Does anyone have a step-by-step example to share? WOW... never thought this would be such a pain.

Message was edited by:

RDPetruska

removed emoticon from subject line.

[davidbarclay]

It absolutely works. Post the output of;

esxcfg-nics -l

esxcfg-vswitch -l

esxcfg-vswif -l

esxcfg-vmknic -l

(block out the IPs if you want to hide that)

Might help us visualise a little better.

PS - use the "code" tags to format the output.

Dave

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

Here is a good doc on networking and teaming: http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9689-b.pdf

For me this when I have seen this it is often a disconnect between what is configured on the vswitch in terms of load balancing policy and how the switch is configured.

[conyards]

I've seen this before and in this instance the COS network & VMotion where on seperate VLANS, turned out the switch trunk port was incorrectly configured.

Simon

[WooHoo]

esxcfg-nics -l

Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex Description

vmnic0 02:03.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706 1000Base-SX

vmnic1 02:04.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706 1000Base-SX

vmnic2 0f:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-SX

vmnic3 11:00.00 bnx2 Up 1000Mbps Full Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-SX

esxcfg-vswitch -l

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports Uplinks

vSwitch0 32 5 32 vmnic2,vmnic0

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

Service Console portgroup0 0 1 vmnic0,vmnic2

VMotion portgroup2 0 1 vmnic2

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports Uplinks

vSwitch1 64 4 64 vmnic3,vmnic1

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

Public portgroup3 0 1 vmnic1,vmnic3

esxcfg-vswif -l

Name Port Group IP Address Netmask Broadcast Enabled DHCP

vswif0 Service Console 10.100.50.33 255.255.255.0 10.100.50.255 true false

esxcfg-vmknic -l

Port Group IP Address Netmask Broadcast MAC Address MTU Enabled

VMotion 10.100.50.30 255.255.255.0 10.100.50.255 00:50:56:60:30:99 1514 true

[WooHoo]

VirtualNoitall,

Yes, that is the doc I used to set this up, but I must be missing something.

Grabbing at straws... What changes if any need to be made to the physical switch? We have no control over the physical switch so I would need a change request.

[VirtualNoitall]

Have a look at this doc that I used when I was getting this setup:

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2006/12/04/esx-server-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking/

I don't do a lot of network config myself so I forwarded this to the network team and worked through our config and what differences there might be for our requirements.

[dinny]

Hiya,

I don't suppose you have "beacon probing" set on your "network failover detection" option, under the "Nic Teaming" tab for your vSwitch0, or for any of the portgroups on it do you?

I had similar problems whenever I tried to use this option.

I spoke to some of the VMware network guys at TSX and they seemed to think it was a "known issue" that would hopefully be fixed in the next release.

If you do have it set - swap it to "Link status only" - that worked OK for me.

Dinny

[admin]

Yes, you can set up a second COS - it'll have to be on a different subnet.