Load Balancing Policy on 1Gb NICs

[TheVMinator]

I'm using 6x 1Gb NICs on blade servers.  I have 2 onboard NICs and 4 NICs provided by a single Mezzanine card.  I'm choosing a load balancing policy.  Given the layout below, is there any reason to use load-based teaming rather than route based on originating port ID? I'm licensed to use load-based teaming if I want to but I don't know if there is any reason in this scenario:

Onboard 1 - Active MGMT, Standby vMotion

Onboard 2 - Active Production Traffic

Mez 1 - Active Backup Traffic

Mez 2 - Active Production Traffic

Mez 3 - Active Backup Traffic

Mez 4 - Active vMotion, Standby Management

[rh5592 · Accepted solution]

If you are licensed for LBT, then use it. It is the only true load-balancing policy as it monitors the load of each NIC on a team and balances accordingly if there is an overload in one of the NICs. Route Based on Originating Port ID just spreads the VM on the uplinks (round robin) and does not care if one of the uplinks is over utilized and the other one under utilized.

I recommend to use LBT on your Production traffic and maybe your Backup traffic.

[TheVMinator]

OK thanks.

-Do I neeed to use EtherChannel upstream on the physical switches for this to work?

[HeathReynolds]

No. Lbt does not require upstream etherchannel.

[TheVMinator]

Thanks again all