Virtual Connect Active\Active Hyper-V setup

ALgon — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 13:20:35 GMT

Hello,

I’m quite new to Virtual connect and have come up with a design for our Hyper-v 2012R2 environment that I’d like some feedback on if possible.

We have a C7000 chassis with 2x 10Gb FlexFabric 24 port modules and we have an ISCSI P4000 SAN.

I’d like this setup to be an active\active configuration

In virtual connect I’ve configured the following:

Production Networks

For the production vSwitch, live migration, CSV, and management networks I’ve created two SUSes carrying multiple VLANS

1x SUS mapped to port X1 and X2 in VC module bay 1

Both uplinks are connected to 2 Trunk ports on switch 1 (Cisco Nexus 5548) link aggregation configured

1x SUS mapped to port X1 and X2 in VC module bay 2

Both uplinks are connected to 2 Trunk ports on switch 2 (Cisco Nexus 5548) link aggregation configured

For ISCSI

1x dedicated link mapped to port X5 and X6 in VC module bay 1

Both uplinks are connected to 2 Access ports on Switch 3 (Cisco Nexus 5548) link aggregation configured

1x dedicated link mapped to port X5 and X6 in VC module bay 2

Both uplinks are connected to 2 Access ports on Switch 4 (Cisco Nexus 5548) link aggregation configured

On each blade, I would team the FlexNics assigned to the SUSes, create a Vswtich on top of the team, and then create tagged Vnics for live migration, management and CSV networks. Virtual machines would connect through the same Vswitch and be tagged for their specific network.

My questions,

Do I need to use SUSes, or should I instead configure and replace them with two Tunnelled Vnets instead?

What are the advantages\disadvantages of doing this? From what I understand, if I use VLAN tunnelling, which seems like less to configure in VC, the Hyper-V switch identifies the tag and directs the packet as necessary. Whereas, if I continue to use SUSes, then VC will need to identify the tag first and then the Hyper-V switch will still need to do it again anyway.

Are there any issues with using link aggregation for my ISCSI NICs on the upstream switch?

Do I need SmartLink enabled on any of these Vnets with the way I’ve configured it, and if so, why?

Many thanks

topic Virtual Connect Active\Active Hyper-V setup in BladeSystem - General

Virtual Connect Active\Active Hyper-V setup