VC Flex 10-10 inline LAG configuration

[Nick Eoannidis]

Hi All I have a c7000 enclosure with x2 Flex 10/10 virtual connect modules installed inline in the chassis. I want to know if its possible to LAG / LACP ports across multiple virtual connect modules? example lag port x1 on VC module 1 and x1 on VC module 2. we have two cx4 uplinks to our core on each of the vc x1 ports - and we dont want to loose 10gb on failover - we want to do an active / active configuration. Regards, Nick

[rronan]

Active / Active is possible with VC 2.10. If your core is a Cisco Catalyst in the 6500 family you may want to consider running VSS this will allow you to span your LACP port channels across switches.

[Nick Eoannidis]

hey cheers for that rronan - we only have one 6509 and are using multiple supervisor 10gig ports. do you the configuration for the active/active ? or can point me the right direction

[rronan]

Are you looking for the configuration on the VC side? Basically you will want to create a duplicate set of network "Ethernet Network" objects within VC. For example it you have a Vlan 225 you would want to create "VC_Network_225_a" and a VC_Network_225_b" and associate each of them with their own VC Uplink Set. The magic behind Active / Active is really on the host side within the host profile where you will present both Vlan 225s to a host one for each LOM or NIC and then let your teaming software HP / ESX networking take care of the rest.

[Nick Eoannidis]

ok that helps alot thanks heaps. this is what i have for the switch side: Current configuration : 174 bytes ! interface TenGigabitEthernet5/4 description VC module 1 (left) switchport switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q switchport mode trunk spanning-tree portfast trunk end beac-u120-core#sh run int t6/4 Building configuration... Current configuration : 175 bytes ! interface TenGigabitEthernet6/4 description VC module 2 (right) switchport switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q switchport mode trunk spanning-tree portfast trunk end with blade one - vlan mgmt-a -----> VC1 LOM:1a vlan-mgmt-b -----> VC2 LOM:2a which is sweet - i can ping the esx host via vc1 lom:1a - however when it boots esx the vc2 lom:2a says its not linked- is this where the host networking / teaming with esx comes in?

[gnijs444]

One important remark about the "active/active" magic is: you need smartlink for your failover or it won't work. you can avoid smartlink in esx servers by using beacon probing, but on physical windows servers you'll need smartlink (together with its current shortcommings) [Updated on 8/29/2009 2:26 AM]

[Nick Eoannidis]

yeah i worked out that using smartlink with active/active for ESX environment is actually faster when you have it activated WITH beacon probing.