Virtual Connect Flex-10 and LACP

[Thierry REDER]

Hello,

We have a new c7000 with 2 Virtual Connect Flex-10 and a Procurve 6600ml-24XG.

Latest firmwares are on all equipment.

Every Virtual Connect Flex-10 (1 is active the other is standby) is connected with 5 DAC cables to the 6600ml-24XG.

We wanted to activate LACP now for the ports on the 6600 where the active Virtual Connect Flex-10 is connected to.

But if we activate LACP on the switch, we loose connection. Links go to standby on the Virtual Connect Flex-10.

Can someone please help us out with a short description how to reach our goal or with an answer to what we are doing wrong here.

Thanks very much

[HEM_2]

Thierry:

you need to create 2 trunks on the procurve switch.

If you simply enable lacp on the procurve switch ports, 2 Dynamic trunks will be created. The problem with Dyn trunks is that they can only be in VLAN 1 (without GVRP).

Therefore, you need to manually create 2 LACP trunks on the Procurve. For example:

switch(config)# trunk 1-5 trk1 lacp
and
switch(config)# trunk 6-10 trk2 lacp

then you can add trk1 and trk2 to the necessary VLANs in a tagged or untagged state just like any other switch port.

When all is said and done, you should have a 5-port lacp channel connecting to each flex10 module.

Also note that if all the uplinks are part of the same Shared Uplink et or VC Ethernet Network that one LACP channel will be active and one LACP channel will be in standby. For an active/active uplink configuration, take a look at scenario 11 from teh Virtual Connect Ethernet Cookbook.

[Thierry REDER]

Hello,

That is what we also tried.

If we do a show trunks we see :

Port Group Type
1 Trk1 LACP

and also for the rest of the ports (1-5).

Group Trk1 is member of default VLAN (just for testing by now...)

But in the Virtual connect manager, then the only port that is Linked/Active goes immediately to Linked/Standby and we are losing network connection.

What we want to have is that the 5 links get us to 50Gb ....

The other 5 on the 2 VC are planned for standing by for now and that is OK for us.

Just for info, in some weeks we want to purchase another 6600 and connect the 2 VC with it's 5 connections to this one to get failover, just like scenario 10 in the cookbook.

Can you help further here ?

Thanks very much

Thierry

[HEM_2]

Thierry,

your config sounds correct...

just to confirm, on VC Module#1 you have 5 10Gb links that connect to ports 1-5 on the Procurve. On the procurve, the ports are configured for "trunk 1-5 trk1 lacp"?

If you show vlan 1 on teh procurve, you see trk1 there?

In VC Manager, you have defined a VC Ethernet Network with just the 5 ports from Bay1 and the connection mode is set for Auto, not Failover?

That should work as far as I know. Are you allowing some time for the LACP channel to negotiate?

in VCM under Hardware Overview-> Interconnect Bays-> Bay 1, what LAG ID's show up for the 10Gb Uplink ports? What shows up in the "connected to" field. Maybe you cans hare a screenshot of that window?

[Thierry REDER]

Hello,

We tried/verified all that you have said.

Does not work.

BUT we tried to create a trunk with only 4 of the 5 links we have, means that we just use the 4 links that are in STANDBY to build the LACP trunk.

Then we see that the 4 links go to active and the 1 link that was active goes to standby after activating the trunk.

All is still in untagged VLAN1.

I suppose then that we now have 40Gb link, but why can't we use all 5 links to create the trunk ?

Thanks again for all help

[HEM_2]

Thierry,

sorry for not seeing this soooner, top of page 19 under Known Issues:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01730696/c01730696.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

VC currently supports up to 8 ports in a single Link Aggregation Groups (LAG) using LACP protocol.
LAGs are created on Ethernet network uplinks using "auto" mode, or automatically created when
connecting multiple ports of the same speed between two VC-Enet modules to form stacking links.
Although up to 8 ports can be aggregated, attempting to form a LAG with more than 40G total
throughput results in the LAG becoming unusable. This problem affects only VC Flex-10 Ethernet
modules because that is the only module with more than four 10G ports.
There is no work-around for creating a LAG with greater than 40G total throughput, whether it is an
uplink or stacking link. If more than 40G of uplink capacity is required for a network, the only
solution is to divide the network into two or more VC Ethernet networks in an Active/Active
configuration, where each network has at most a 40G uplink LAG.

[Thierry REDER]

Hello,

I will check this and give you a reply.

Thanks

Thierry