How do I combine two NICs for added throughput and failover?

[jdinkel]

I have already set it up to use a single NIC with a separate VLAN for VMotion and a separate VLAN for the virtual machines and service console. All my ESX (3.0.1) have 2 nics and I would like to add that second nic to the virtual switch to get double the bandwidth and have failover in case either connection suddenly dies.

I also have 2 switches so I could plug one nic into each switch, or would I have to plug them both into the same switch and should I configure LAG on the switch?

Thanks for any help and clarification!

[AustinPowers]

On each host go to configuration / networking / choose properties on the vswitch that your VMs are on / network adapters / add.

Then go to ports / hilight the VM port and edit / NIC teaming / check load balancing, failover detection, and notify switches. Leave the drop downs at default settings unless you have a reason to change them.

Your NICs will have to be in the same switch or if they are trunked, put one in each switch for redundancy.

[bggb29]

check here there is a link to a ppt on high performance networking

also for the cisco side of the switch

www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pd

both contain a lot of good info.

We use 2 cisco 3750's with the 32gb cable then trunk them back to our backbone. This way the mac addresses are not seen as coming from seperate switches into the core switch.

We have 2 vwsf connections across the switches and trunk guest os's across them.

We are not using etherchannel since going to 3.0 into the switches

[esiebert7625]

Basically just go into your vSwitch properties and on the Network Adapters tab select Add and pick an available NIC to add to the vSwitch. By default it will be active and load balance based on the originating port ID. You can change this by editing the vSwitch properties and select the NIC Teaming tab.

Here's some good network reads...

VMware ESX Server 3 802.1Q VLAN Solutions - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf

Networking Virtual Machines - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/TAC9689-A.pdf

Networking Scenarios & Troubleshooting - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9689-b.pdf

ESX3 Networking Internals - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=41

High Performance ESX Networking - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=43

Network Throughput in a Virtual Infrastructure - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_network_planning.pdf

Multi-NIC Performance in ESX 3.0.1 and XenEnterprise 3.2.0 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Multi-NIC_Performance.pdf

ESX Server, NIC Teaming and VLAN Trunking - http://blog.scottlowe.org/2006/12/04/esx-server-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking/

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

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Thanks, Eric

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[jdinkel]

Your NICs will have to be in the same switch or if

they are trunked, put one in each switch for

redundancy.

What do you mean by "if they are trunked" ? As far as the vlan goes, yes the ports that the nics connect to will be set up as vlan trunks, or is there some other sort of trunking that you are talking about?

[AustinPowers]

With Cisco switches, for instance, some models like the 3750 can use a backbone cable that provides aggregated (i.e. 32GB) bandwidth between all ports. Otherwise, with lesser switches, you can "trunk" a group of ports. Lets say you have two 2970s. You can trunk 4 ports each on two of them, and you get redundancy and 4GB total throughput between them. To devices on either switch, they look like they are all on the same switch.

[jdinkel]

I don't have Cisco's. I have Dell 5324 switches. I've never heard of doing anything like that on the Dells. I think I'm going to try doing it with everything in one switch.

[jdinkel]

Ok, reading the documentation that esiebert7625 linked to was a big help, especially that blog at the end of his list. Anyway, it's all set up using one switch. I tested the failover and it works without a flaw, network activity was not impacted in the least when I pulled a cable; you couldn't even tell.

I used pretty much all the defaults except I change the load balancing on the ESX Servers to use IP Hash and I set the LAG settings on the Dell switch to use Layer 2-3 for load balancing.

Thanks for everyone's help.