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fabricesforzani
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Contributor

NIC ACTIVE/ACTIVE ATIVE/STANDBY nic TEAMING

Hello

I have some questions about NIC TEAMING

What is nnic bounding vs noc teaming

To have 2 nic in active / active, I must go in active adapters and add a second nic

My question is : when teh 2 card are in active adapters, the both of them are active ?

Must I go know on my physical switch and so something to make this work

somebody told me that when 2 card are in active adapters section they have the same mac addreess ??

If yes, where can i see the same mac address

How many card can I add in the active adappers

Active Passive :

To be in active / Passive must I add the second card in the standby adapters

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Chuck8773
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We always use Active/Active. Both cards are active. But each VM is only using one nic at a time. Each VM will be limited to the bandwidth of a single physical connection. We also trunk the ports on the switch side so that every VLan is available on those ports. When you trunk on the switch side, you must set the "Load Balancing policy" on the vSwitch to "IP Hash".

Correct about the active/passive. Setting one nic to standby will make it passive.

As for the MAC addresses of the nics, you can get this information from the service console but will probably not need it. The physical nics have their own mac addresses but those don't get used in the network. The physical switches that the hosts are connected to, see the MAC addresses of the VM. Trunking the ports on the physical switch is a good idea as you will see MAC Flapping error messages from the switch when a VM changes which physical nic is being using.

I am not sure on the limit to pnic's in a vswitch.

That's a lot of info. Let me know where things are still unclear.

Charles Killmer, VCP

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fabricesforzani
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Hi

What do you mean by trunking the ports : how can you do that and wht is it ?

Again about bounding ??? a lot of guys says that the 2 card are used in the same time

so in esx there is no bounding ??

Trunking the ports on the physical switch is a good idea as you will see MAC Flapping error messages from the switch when a VM changes which physical nic is being using

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Chuck8773
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Hot Shot

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk689/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094c52.shtml

Correct. The nics are not bonded in ESX. It uses them as if there is no difference in the network.

Check this PDF out.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

Charles Killmer, VCP

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Charles Killmer, VCP4 If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".
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