Virtual Connect Gigabit - load balancing with in port set across ports

[A.W.R]

Hi,

We have set up the HP 1/10Gb Virtual Connect Ethernet Module for c-Class BladeSystem to connect to 2 different networks. We have 4 external ports in a port set connected to network A, and 4 external ports connected in a port set to network B.

Virtual Connect does not seem to load balance across the 4 ports, but rather only uses port 1.

Does this feature only currently provide failover capability? The documentation seems to imply that it does load balancing as well?

Thanks
Andrew

[HEM_2 · Accepted solution]

Andrew:

In order to acheive load balancing across multiple uplinks in a VC network or multiple uplinks in a Shared Uplink Set, all the uplinks must connect to the same upstream switch and the upstream switch must be set to support LACP.

For Example, on a Cisco switch you would set up:

channel-group # mode active

on the interfaces where you are connecting VC.

[KSF]

Interesting, so if you connect to two upstream switches (for resilience), with active & passive uplinks from two VC networks spread across swicthes 1 & 2, would you have 2 LACP groups? ..and would this then load balanace across each active and passive pair? Or across all four uplinks?

Regards
Kevin