NIC teaming question

[rteglgaa]

Hi,

We have several ESX servers with 4 NIC's each, assigned to the production VM network. These four connection goes in pairs to 2 different switches, so I want to trunk them two and two.

The way I will do this, is to setup IP hash teaming on the VM production port group. Then I will put the 2 primary NIC's (to switch #1) in the active state, and the 2 secondary NIC's (to switch #2) in the standby state.

Then my questions are these:

If one of the active links fail, what happens exactly? Does anything happen at all, as long as the other active link is active?

The reason why I ask, is that I don't want VMware to try and trunk over one of the secondary links and one of the primary links at the same time, sending traffic to both switches. The way I want this to work, is to use the primary links, and in case of failure I want a complete switch to the secondary adapters - no concurrent use of active and standby NICs.

Thanks in advance for any answers

/Rasmus

[rteglgaa]

40 views and not one comment?

[DennisHoff]

Hello Rasmus,

one possible Way ist to define a Trunk on both switches and tell your switch to deactivate the trunk in case of an failure. Then configure two of the nics in your ESX as active an two as stand-by.

If now an failure occures in your active switch all ports will be deactivated and the ESX will use the two stand by nic. remember that esx marks the stand by nics as stand by even if an failure occures.

Kind Regards

Dennis

[rteglgaa]

Thanks for your reply. That is exactly what I intended - glad to know it isn't that much off

But what will happen if I pull 1 of the cables in the active trunk then? As I see it there are 3 possibilities:

1) Nothing happens. Traffic continues to flow through the one cable left in the trunk.

2) All traffic goes to the standby trunk.

3) One of the standby adapters are made active along with the one active adapter remaining.

/Rasmus

[DennisHoff · Accepted solution]

In my config if you pull out one nic all traffic will go through the stand by path. because the trunk deactivates the whole trunk if only one nic fails.

[wburton]

This forum has been very helpful in expanding my network to a much more intelligent design. I have been able to implement most of the ideas here for teaming and redundancy but I am stumped by this one comment from Dennis. There is a possible ambiguity here but I think you are talking about the Cisco switch disabling the port channel if one port of the channel goes down. What option tells the Cisco switch to disable the port channel if one member of the channel fails?

Our config:

vSwitch0 route by ip hash

vmnic0 --> ciscosw1 port 1

vmnic1 --> ciscosw1 port 2

vmnic4 --> ciscosw2 port 1

vmnic5 --> ciscosw2 port 2

portgroup1 has vmnic0,1 active and vmnic4,5 standby

The cisco switches are not stacked. There are 2 separate port channel groups created, 1 on each switch. If ciscosw1 port 1 goes down, how do you bring down ciscosw1 port 2 or the corresponding port channel so that all traffic now goes to ciscosw2?

[DennisHoff]

Sehr geehrter Kunde, sehr geehrte Kundin,

in der Zeit vom 29. März bis zum 04. März befinde ich mich nicht im Haus und habe nur eingeschränkten Zugriff auf meine Mails. Ihre Nachricht wird nur gespeichert und nicht weitergeleitet. In dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an unsere Zentrale unter der Rufnummer 02331 - 340890. Vielen Dank für Ihr Verständnis.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen Dennis Hoff

[jasoncllsystems]

I don't think it can be done. The traffic will keep running on ciscosw1 port 2 until it die then only it switch to ciscosw2.

Regards,

Jas

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[DennisHoff]

Sorry for my late reply.

I have Nortel Switches. I can tell the switch that if one Link in the trunk get lost all links in the trunk should be disabled.

In the Attachemet you can see my config.

Kind Regards

Dennis