HP 5900 link-modes and vlan traffic

[computard]

I have been having the utmost difficulty attemtpting to setup a vSAN cluster.

The vast majority of my errors are communication errors but I do not see what could be holding me back. I can ping all the nics but still I suspect it has to do with how the network is setup. This discussion has more to do with vSphere but as I am unsure about my router config I figured wouldn't hurt to start here while I wait on tech support.

I don't fully understand the difference betwen link-mode route and link-mode bridge other than route is for switch level 3 and bridge for switch level 2. So I suspect some packets are getting dropped between vlans?

I am using an HP 5900 Switch, 2 Apollo 2000's with 4 HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9's and 2 TenG Nics each going to the switch, one for the management network and one for vSAN.

This is the config with successful ICMP traffic - but something in vSphere isn't plaing nicely. vSAN in 6.7 uses unicast where I suspect part of the problem lies, as VCSA still says multicast in the WebGUI. I have the nic for management on vlan 255 and nic for vSAN on vlan 254 with the folowing configs I assumed would pass all traffic.

port link-mode bridge

port link-type trunk

port trunk permit vlan all

I have tried route below with no connectivity at all presume needs to have actual routes put in

[nikunjbhatia]

Hi

The advantage of a routed port is that it is not considered a switch port, so e.g. stp will automatically not run on the port (no L2 broadcasts are passing the interface).
The other advantage is that in case you want to pass multiple IP interfaces over 1 physical interface, vlan tags are required on the interface (in case you would be using VRFs for instance).