cisco 6509 6513

[tdubb123]

I have a 6509 and 6513 in a failover config (1active/1 passive). How should I cable my dell server with 6 pNICs?

2 broadcom onboard

4 Intel PCI

NO ISCSI all fiber channel

Should I be plugging all ports into the active switch?

[cannon1000]

For IP traffic you need to look at NIC Teaming and Failover. For Fiber Channel you need to look up Multipathing. These are common, supported and documented.

Most common configuration is to run half of the physical nics to one switch (we'll call it Side A) and the redundant links to Side B. You should have an ISL between switches as well.

You should have Two Console, Two Vmotion & Two Data connections. One from each will go to side A (appropriate VLAN or TRunk port) and the others will go to Side B (Same VLAN or Trunks).

This may help: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

Also if you look at the ESX 3.5 Configuration Guide follow these chapters to find info on "Virtual Switch Policies".

ESX Server 3 Configuration Guide : Advanced Networking : Virtual Switch Properties and Policies : Virtual Switch Policies

Now if you have the newer VS-SUP720-3C supervisor engines in both 6500's, then you can create a loop-free bonded connection (aka. EtherChannel) to both chassis'. So both links will be active and load-balanced giving you twice the bandwidth. This is much easier - faster and has sub-second failover if a side goes down. You can do this because the VSS feature treats both chassis as a single switch. Depending on what you have in your chassis today - you may or may not be able to use this feature.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1004048&sl...

Fiber channel is slightly different and does not go through the 6500. Look up multipathing in your config guide.

[atbnet]

I have done just this and it works perfectly.

Configure you cisco switches for trunking and link aggregation http://www.vmadmin.co.uk/resources/35-esxserver/91-esxnetciscotrunklinkagg

And configure your ESX servers for the best possible setup for 6NICS http://www.vmadmin.co.uk/resources/35-esxserver/104-esxnetwork6pnic

Physical NIC Virtual Switch Port Group(s)

vmnic0 vSwitch0 Service Console

vmnic1 vSwitch0 Service Console

vmnic2 vSwitch1 vMotion

vmnic3 vSwitch1 vMotion

vmnic4 vSwitch2 VM Network

vmnic5 vSwitch2 VM Network

You might want to mix and match the VMnics so they are on seperate physical cards so if one dual port card goes... you get the idea I hope!

Andy, VMware Certified Professional / VMware vExpert Award 2009

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