NLB MultiCast and Flex 10/Virtual Connect

[NuggetGTR]

Hi all,

Im not sure if anyone can help me here or point me to some good doco, but cant hurt to ask.

I administer quiet a large ESX environment and this environment hosts a heap to windows NLB clusters(to my dislike) currently running in unicast which is causing me too may issues and have been pushing to change over to multicast. Our infrastructure was sitting in C3000 enclosures with Cisco 3020's in the back, for multicast I would have needed to put manual arp entries onto these 3020's. But now im currently moving all the hosts over to new kit still c3000 enclosures just new blades and has Flex 10 and virtual connect.

Im not network guy but I believe this then goes straight to the core, how does this change multicast in ESX? do the arp entries have to be put onto the core router/switch now?

Still learning virtual connect and flex so im a little unsure how this will change things for NLB multicast.

any pointers would be great

Cheers

[chadwickking]

May I humbly Suggest for your reading pleaure!

The top bloggers are always a good spot to start I hope these help you out. To be honest I don't use it currently but read up on it from time to time:

Duncan Epping (VCDX)

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/01/28/hps-flex-10-and-vmware-esxi-support/

Frank Denneman

http://frankdenneman.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/flex-10-lessons-learned/

Good Community Thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/247875

Networking Blog:

http://kennethvanditmarsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/understanding-hp-flex-10-mappings-with-vmware/

Vmwold Presentation on it:

http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-3839

This fella lays out all sorts of good links too:

http://derek858.blogspot.com/2010/04/vsphere-hp-flex-10virtual-connect-and.html

I hope this helps you out!

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[NuggetGTR]

Thanks for the info there, I have read some of those but my issue is more specific to multicast NLB,

But it looks like Ive found an answer to my question.

mmm wish i could give myself points,

just for reference for anyone wanting to know VC by default should just flood multicast traffic on a vnet.

If the multicast traffic is IGMP-enabled and you enable IGMP snooping in VC then VC will only send the multicast traffic to ports who have joined that multicast group.

multicast NLB uses a multicast IP that resolves to a Unicast MAC... some routers don't like that and a static ARP entry would need to be added still.

So I just have to move the ARP entries up to the core, Flex 10 and VC technically aren't a switch or a router even tho it has replaced those bits of kit.

Cheers