Vmware ESX and 9702

[Pako]

Hello, I am going to connect a vmware esx server to a 9702 switch using multiple nics in the "real" server. What is the recomended configuration for the vmware server and for the switch ports?

Tahnks for your help

[jlettinck]

Hello Pako. The best way would be Link Aggregation. But VMWare only supports the static link aggregation.
This means that if you have 2, 4 or 8 connections to a server, the server will only use one connection and the others as failover.
There is no real loadbalancing. This is not related to the switch but related to VMware. VMware does not fully support IEEE802.3ad link aggregation.

An example is shown below (taken from a live vmware environment)

2 link aggregations, 1 consisting of 2 interfaces and one consisting of 4 interfaces.

! Link Aggregate :
static linkagg 1 size 2 admin state enable
static linkagg 2 size 4 admin state enable
static agg 1/3 agg num 1
static agg 1/4 agg num 1
static agg 1/5 agg num 2
static agg 1/6 agg num 2
static agg 1/7 agg num 2
static agg 1/8 agg num 2

Vlan tagging on the link aggregations (not on the physical interfaces)
vlan 4 802.1q 1 "TAG AGG 2 VLAN 4"
vlan 5 802.1q 1 "TAG AGG 2 VLAN 5"
vlan 4 802.1q 2 "TAG AGG 2 VLAN 4"
vlan 5 802.1q 2 "TAG AGG 2 VLAN 5"


Setting a native vlan on the link aggregations
vlan 10 port default 1
vlan 10 port default 2


Hope this helps.
Good luck.

[blupsy]

Hi,
since VM-Ware Rel. 5.1 should be able to use LACP-Linkagg. Have anyone success in testing this feature?

[tlegras]

An example is shown below (taken from a live vmware environment)

2 link aggregations, 1 consisting of 2 interfaces and one consisting of 4 interfaces.

! Link Aggregate :
static linkagg 1 size 2 admin state enable
static linkagg 2 size 4 admin state enable
static agg 1/3 agg num 1
static agg 1/4 agg num 1
static agg 1/5 agg num 2
static agg 1/6 agg num 2
static agg 1/7 agg num 2
static agg 1/8 agg num 2

Thanks for your very precious exemple . Could you tell as well what settings do you use for ESXi so that it works? I tried load balancind with 2 NIC with hash based on IP + failover based on link status (the one advised by vmware for Etherchannel support) but it works only partially . IP Connections fails for some IP while it works for some others.

Hi,
since VM-Ware Rel. 5.1 should be able to use LACP-Linkagg. Have anyone success in testing this feature?

as far as I could read on the documentation, LACP is only supported by VDS but not by ESXi itself.

Thanks for help
Thierry

[hans-juergen]

Hello Thierry,
did you get it to work. I have the same problem behaivior with a 6900 and an ESXi host.