vMotion problem between different BLC7000

[owiking]

Hi

We recently installed our second BLC7000 chassis. We have 6 ESXi G9 servers that we want to balance between the two chassis. We have moved one of the servers to the new chassis and it works as it should. But when we use vMotion between the chassis we get a disrupt in the network traffic on the virtual machine that got moved, sometimes up to 3 minutes.

In the 2 BLC7000 chassis we have 2 Virtual Connect FlexFabrics in each, they are connected to 2 Cisco Nexus 93180YC switches through port-channels that runs VPC.

When we use vMotion and moves a virtual server from an ESXi in one chassi to the other we see that it takes time before the MAC address of that server is updated on the correct port-channel in the Nexus switches. Our guess is that we have an ARP table that needs to be updated.

In VMware we have chosen "Yes" on the option "Notify switches". And thus the ESXi host should send a gratuitous ARP or RARP to update the ARP data on the nearest switch. Though, could it be that the nearest switch in this case is the Virtual Connect FlexFabrics and that they dont update the Nexus switches?

Is there a similar command in the Virtual Connects as in Nexus to show what MAC adresses resides on each port?

We recently found the same problem with a Microsoft SQL Cluster with 2 hosts, one in each BLC7000. If we move an instance we get the same problem as with the ESXi vMotion, it takes time before the cluster IP address responds again.

Anyone else got the same problem as we have?

Thanks.

Olof

[Thomas Martin]

Hello,

how did you set up the VC FlexFabric Moduls in each Enclosure? Did you use physical or virtual MAC and WWNs? If you use virtual MAC addresses than be sure that you use different Ranges for these addresses. Otherwise you will use the same address twice.

Thomas

[owiking]

Hi

We are using virtual MAC and WWNs. But I dont think that matter regarding our virtual servers that exists on the ESXi hosts since they got their MAC addresses from VMware.

Olof