Can LACP be setup immediately after ESXi install for Management Access?

[jasonistre]

I have a chassis situation where every node has dual 10Gb.  The pair of chassis network switches are a vLAG pair and the pair of internal ports for each node are set to dynamic LACP.  So when any host OS gets installed you immediately create a LACP team\bond and assign the vlan ID with IP to the interface to get on the network.  This works great for Unix, Linux, Windows, but I can't seem to get ESXi to install and function like this.  I need the management IP on the LACP.   It looks like ESXi first needs a non-LACP interface to create a management connection to vcenter before I can create and convert to a dvs LACP interface? right?    Is there a way I can do this through CLI to get my management interface online with LACP?

The only way I have found that currently works is to:

reconfigure the network switches to disable LACP on the interfaces to that particular node;

configure ESXi with normal management vswitch interface;

join it to vCenter;

Migrate the ports and management to a VDS;

configure the uplinks for LACP;

reconfigure the network switches to enable LACP on the interfaces to that particular node;

This means admins make network switch interfaces changes multiple times everytime a new ESXi server is installed or server is reloaded with ESXi.  right?

[peetz]

Interesting problem ...

You are right, LACP only works with dvS switches.

IF you create a standard switch at installation that uses only one of the two LACP uplinks, will this work?

If yes you could migrate the vmkernel portgroup from the standard switch to the LACP-enabled distributed switch after you have added the host to vCenter.

[jasonistre]

We tried that.  The ports will get link but switch wont bring them into an "up" state to transmit traffic unless it receives LACPDUs to negotiate a port-channel.