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jelkhour
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-11-2011 01:58 PM

VMWare support for Etherchannel in VSS or VDS versus Nexus 1000v

Based on  that note

« Note: The only load balancing option for vSwitch or vDistributed Switch that can be used with EtherChannel is IP HASH.

  • Do not use beacon probing with IP HASH load balancing.
  • Do not configure standby or unused uplinks with IP HASH load balancing.
  • We only support one Etherchannel per vSwitch or vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS).»

Extracted from that article : http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100404...

We understand that we cannot connect (or it’s not supported)  one single VMWAre VDS switch to many etherchannel. One Etherchannel per VDSwitch is supported. I guess it’s related to the IP Hashing algorithm that VMWare use. And more we cannot leave any unused or standby uplinks configured in the same VSS or VDS that have a VMWare port group connected to Etherchannel (link aggregation) using IP Hash (see 2nd bullet in the note).

Solution to that matter is to use multiple VSwitch or VDS and point each to single separate link aggregation.

In our case we prefer not to go in that direction because we’re planning to use Nexus 1000v to manage VMWare Networking layer and to connect it to many etherchannel for a different kind of traffic. 

Though here is my question.

All of the above apply to VMWare VSwitch as well as to VMWare Virtual Distributed Switch.

Does it apply to Nexus 1000 v Switch ?

We’re planning to use Nexus 1000V and

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lwatta
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
‎07-11-2011 04:28 PM

I can answer the N1KV questions.

What you want to do n the N1KV is valid. You can have multiple uplink port-profiles with different nics attached to those port-profiles in port-channels.

There is one caveat you cannot overlap vlans between those port-profiles. If you overlap VLANs we have no way to promise traffic for the vlan will go up only one path and that it will not cause a duplicate packet and broadcast problem.

The uplinks are all part of the same N1KV DVS so no need to create two.

Your config would like something like

port-profile type eth uplink-channel-1

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 2-100

vmware port-group

no shut

channel-group mode auto mode active

port-profile type eth uplink-channel-2

switchport mode trunk

switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-200

vmware port-group

no shut

channel-group mode auto mode active

What you will see is two right side connections to the DVS in Virtual Center. When you add nics you can add them to either uplink port-profile.

You need to create the port-channels on the physical switch but the channel-group command will automatically create the port-channels on the N1KV.

louis

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