VMware Cloud Community
Mikeluff
Contributor
Contributor

NIC Configuration issue with 10GB

Hi,

I need some help with our NIC setup on our hosts.  We have two Cisco 6509 switches configured as VSS...

In our hosts we have 2 x 10GB and 4 x 1 GB NIC's...

Two vSwitches, once for Management and VM and one for NFS traffic.

Each vSwitch has 1 x 10GB and 2 x 1GB (which we want to use for failover of 10GB).

At the moment there is an etherchannel giving 12GB, but we keep getting dropouts as I presume it changes which NIC is routing the traffic. What we really want is the 10GB in active mode and the 2 x 1GB as an etherchannel in standby. These are trunk ports as we need to run multiple VLAN's over them...

Any suggestions as we can't use Route Based on IP Hash when using standy NIC's...

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
9 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

If you don't have any special requirements for using EtherChannel, don't use it. Unless you use the Cisco NEXUS 1000V add-on there's no way to configure LACP. I'd recommend you use the default settings for the vSwitch "Route based on originating port ID" and configure the uplink ports as trunk ports without EtherChannel. This way you can set the 10GBit/s NIC as Active and the 2 one GBit/s NICs as Standby. Another advantage of this configuration is, that you can connect the uplinks to different switches, which will provide redundancy in case of a switch failure.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
MauroBonder
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

This discussion was moved from the VMware ESX 4 community to the  VMware vSphere vNetwork

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.  

Mauro Bonder - Moderator

*Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers. *Por favor, não esqueça de atribuir os pontos se a resposta foi útil ou resolveu o problema.* Thank you/Obrigado
Reply
0 Kudos
Mikeluff
Contributor
Contributor

OK so for some reason now, on my vSwitch which is used for NFS traffic it fails to allow me to migrate machines to the storage on that NIC.

I have done as you said, no Etherchannel anymore. 10GB is active 2 x 1GB are standby and set to Route based on originating virtual port ID - but when the 10GB is set as a trunk port it can see the NFS storage but the migration files. If we set the 10GB to use an access port then it works fine???

Any ideas?

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

If you configure the physical port as a trunk port, you need to set the VLAN-ID on the port group(s). This should work with all VLANs except for the native VLAN (usually VLAN 1).

André

Reply
0 Kudos
Mikeluff
Contributor
Contributor

I should have said...

VLANS are tagged and I can see the NFS. In fact when I start the migration I see the folder structure get created on the NFS and the files show up as I'd they are getting created and size starts to creap up... Then it errors out...

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Can you please describe your current network setup? A screen shot would be great.

Did you configure anything special, like Jumbo frames ...?

André

Reply
0 Kudos
Mikeluff
Contributor
Contributor

Here’s some screenshots…

No jumbo frames configured to my knowledge.

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

From what I can see there's nothing wrong with this configuration!?

If we set the 10GB to use an access port then it works fine???

Did you use the same port and reconfigure it for this test or did you use another port? All I can think of at the moment is a configuration issue on the physical side.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
Mikeluff
Contributor
Contributor

Same port, just switched it to an access port….

I will speak to our Comms guys again in the morning, but think it’s all good on their end.

Reply
0 Kudos