topic Re: c7000 and uplink throughput in BladeSystem - General

c7000 and uplink throughput

UK-Blr — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:21:21 GMT

Hi,

I am just wondering and to understand more:

In a C7000 encosure with 6 VC Ethernet modules loaded (3 active, 3 standby and Four 1GB uplink port on each Ethernet module) and, if we uplink all the ports on the active bays 1,3,5,7 to a single uplink ether channel and standby bay module ports on 2,4,6,8 to another single uplink ether channel connected to a different switch, using trunk option in a cisco switching environment.

Do i get 16GB trunk throughput of active and 16GB throughput of standby. Any issues with this coniguration?

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

Adrian Clint — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:26:49 GMT

Uday, You can only have etherchannel trunks from a single VC module. You cannot span a trunk accross different VCs. So with 8 VC modules you would have eight 4GB trunks.

What you could do is buy 10GB CX4 0.5m stacking cables and connect up all the VC modules then you could have four 8GB trunks.

As for active/passive - that depends on your VC network design. You could have them all active.

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

UK-Blr — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:08:45 GMT

Thanks for clarifying. Yes we have cx4 cable for vc module communication/redundancy.

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

UK-Blr — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:14:22 GMT

with this in mind, it created one more new question.

Assume if we have two different active 4gb Access port uplinks from different vc ethernet module.
Later if we add the whole active 8 gb uplink nics(4gb + 4gb)connected to a single vmware virtual switch, how does it behave.

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

Adrian Clint — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:40:32 GMT

By default the VC uplinks are usually set to Auto. Which is to auto form fully active trunks if the trunks are configured by the switch.

So as long as you configure all 8 ports in an etherchannel trunk at the switch end (single or stacked switchs) on the VC end they will auto configure to an 8GB trunk.

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

UK-Blr — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:46:04 GMT

ok...

heregoes more details.

One ether channel access port for 4 uplinks in VC module-1

One more ether channel access port of 4 uplinks in VC module-3

So i have total 8Gb uplink, if we combine alotgether in vmware virtual switch.

I am sure this creates routing issues, because of two different ether access channels, combined using vmware vswitch.

But, just searching is this option works really or not.

Re: c7000 and uplink throughput

Adrian Clint — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:58:46 GMT

That just gives you two 4GB uplinks (as they are through different VCs).
So thats "Scenario 10: Network failover with LACP" in the Virtual Connect Ethernet Cookbook. "The uplinks connected to VC-Enet module 1 and 3 cannot be combined for aggregated bandwidth". So its 4GB Active/4GB Passive.

Take a look at Scenario 11, 12A or 12B in the cookbook to get 8GB usable bandwidth.