VC Flex10 not passing traffic from Gigamon to ESX VM nic

[chuckk281]

Martin was looking to do some network analyzing using Gigamon:

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Hi,

Here is a description of the problem.

"The VC FLEX10 Ethernet module has 4 network's created that go out seperate uplinks.  A Windows VM on a ESX Blade can talk to 3 of the 4 networks fine through the uplinks.  The 4th Network that is not working is a SPAN (Switched Port Analyzer) Network, whose uplink connects to a Gigamon Port aggregator.  There does not seem to be any traffic flowing into the VC from this uplink. The ESX NIC connected to this Network is set for Promiscuous mode and using WireShark, they only see the local Broadcast traffic.  VC FW=V2.12"

I am trying to get the customer to look at the Detailed Statistics for the SPAN Uplink to see if there is any traffic but the details are all blank.  I think this is a IE8 Display issue.  Access to this private C7000 chassis is only available by Remote Desktop to a UK Box that has IE 8 on it.

Anyone had any experience with this kinda config ?

Does VC Flex10 Support a Nic in Promiscuous Mode ?

Any Idea's ?

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Vincent provided some answers:

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Martin,

You cannot use Virtual Connect to run a network analyzer on a blade server inside the enclosure, VC will not forward the SPAN traffic from the outside. VC will forward a frame to a downlink port only if one of these conditions is met:

- broadcast or multicast frame

- unicast frame with a destination MAC address that has been learned on that port

- unicast frame with a destination MAC address that has not been learned anywhere

VC's own port mirroring feature works the other way around: take traffic on the downlinks and mirror it on an external port where you can plug an analyzer.

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Good info on analyzers. Have you used Gigamon to look at VC links? Let us know how it worked out.

[CA-EQ]

Hi,

I am running in to a similar scenario like this. I know this post was over a year go but I will like to know if this is still true. The traffic of a SPAN port can not be send to a blade on a c7000 enclosure using Flex-10 VC.

Thanks,

CA