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ESX physical NIC control on VC Active/Passive scenarios - teaming mode?

 
chuckk281
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ESX physical NIC control on VC Active/Passive scenarios - teaming mode?

Rinaldo had a question on Active/Passive in the Virtual Connect world:

 

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On the VC Ethernet Cookbook (august 2010 Edition) in the Scenario 1:5 – VLAN Tagging (802.1Q) with a Shared Uplink Set (SUS) with Link Aggregation using LACP (802.3ad) – VMware ESX

It’s reported to use Load Balancing based on Port ID.

As it’s a Active/Passive scenario, wouldn’t the second physical NIC transmit thru the horizontal stacking link o reach the Active uplink?

Shouldn’t the Load Balancing be disabled?

 

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Nick replied:

The active/passive scenario only refers to the uplinks out of the enclosure, all NICs will still be active as VC will route traffic internally to the module with the active uplink.

 

Chris also chimed in:

Also, you circled “Beacon Probing” in the vSwitch image.  That has nothing to do with load balancing traffic across pNICs.  Beacon Probing is a method of Path Validation.  You should make sure that the NICs have the latest firmware and driver, then change the Network Failure Detection to “Link State.”

 

This is documented in the “VC Flex-10 and vSphere 4 Networking Reference Architecture” and “VC FlexFabric and vSphere 4 Networking Reference Architecture” whitepapers I published.  What isn’t called out is the specific firmware and driver versions that would be required.  That is maintained in the “Virtual Connect Solution Recipe” whitepaper.

 

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