Network : 2 physical switchs and 4 ETH ports in ESX

[Enafets]

Hi there,

I'd like to know how to setup my 2 switchs (HP Procurve 2810) to have the "better" performance and failover. They are stacked using one ETH port (Fibre in future)

My 3 ESX servers have 4 ETH links, 2 per physical switch

ESX1 = Switch 1 port1 + port2 / Switch2 port1 + port2

ESX2 = same as above but 3/4

ESX3 = same with 5/6

Do i have to activate TRUNK in the physical switchs between S1.1 / S1.2 / S2.1 / S2.2 ? or let them configured as default ?

For ESX1 :

Switch1(config)# trunk 1,2 trk1 trunk

Switch2(config)# trunk 1,2 trk1 trunk

and repeat for ESX2 and 3 :

trunk 3,4 trk2 trunk

trunk 5,6 trk3 trunk

And how to set my vSwitchs NIC Teaming options for the LoadBalancing (IP Hash or not) ?

Thanks for your comments

[dmn0211]

The ProCurve configuration you will need to mark the ports as part of a trunk and then set the trunk to type trunk and not LACP. Set the load balancing policy to ip hash.

Checkout this link for full details.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/09/05/vmware-esx-nic-teaming-and-vlan-trunking-with-hp-procurve/