Help with stacking old 1/10GB VC-Ethernet modules in same chassis

[Matt Sebel]

I have an older chassis with the 8-port 1/10Gb VC-Eth modules in slots 1/2 and 5/6. I've stacked them together using just a single cat5 cable running from VC-Eth1,Port8 to VC-Eth5, Port8 and then likewise for VC-Eth2,Port8 to VC-Eth6,Port8 and the stacking links are showing up successful in VC Manager. Here's my problem:

I can't get communication to work by going out VC-Eth5 across the stacking link to VC-Eth1 and then outbound to my external switches and the same goes with VC-Eth6 not going out through VC-Eth2. I've successfully testing connection straight out of VC-Eth1 and 2 so I know that's not the issue. I'm pretty sure I have this all set up correctly, but it's not working for me. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks.

[Hongjun Ma]

can u post screecapture for your "Shared Uplink Set" and the server profile definition so we can see how vlans are defined at uplink and server downlink?

[Steven Clementi]

Yes, some screenshots might help, but I am more concerned as to why you don't just supply additional uplinks to bays 5/6 and configure those nics to talk through those uplinks so they do not need to make the jump..  If it is simply an availability problem I could understand.  I am not saying it is wrong to do it this way... just wondering why.

[Matt Sebel]

Because this chassis will run only VMware ESXi hosts, I did not define any "Shared Uplink Sets" but instead created vNets with tunneling enabled for each VC-Eth module and then assiged the uplinks to those vNets and the physical uplinks are in a LACP trunk. I had originally assigned a singled uplink to vNet_Bay5 and vNet_Bay6 but thought that might be the problem so I removed any physical uplinks from those vNets.

And yes, the reason I've tried to do this is to avoid plugging more 1Gb uplinks into the switching environement. If we can't make it work this way, I'll go ahead and get a couple uplinks for each additional module.

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

Assign vNet Bay1 to Mezz1:1 (3rd NIC)

Assign vNet Bay2 to Mezz1:2 (4th NIC)

That should fix your problem.  ("should" being the keyword)

[Matt Sebel]

That did it! Steven, you are a life saver!! Thank you, both, for responding to my post so quickly. I've worked with the 1/10Gb VC-Eth stuff in the past but never had multiple VC-Eth modules per chassis so this was new to me and finding the right documentation has been basically impossible. Thanks again!

[Steven Clementi]

You can go ahead and delete those other 2 vnet's if you haven't already.  They are not needed.