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Re: Teaming and several VLANs question

 
dj_farid
Occasional Advisor

Teaming and several VLANs question

I am working for a company that has deployed HP teaming on all their HP servers.

Each server has 2 NICs. Each NIC is connected to a different ProCurve switch. There are several VLANs on the net.

The software on the server is set up as "auto" this translates to Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) with the current setup.

The company does not have the "Intelligent Networking Pack".

Now to my question:
Does this setup work as intended since there are more than one VLAN?
I found this document describing all the different types of teaming: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/teaming.html
There is one sentence under TLB that makes me uncertain: "TLB teams can be split across switches as long as all members are in the same layer 2 network."
I interpret this as it will not work if there are more than one VLAN. Am I understanding it correctly?

Also I found this whitepaper:ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/networking/TeamingWP.pdf
"Team members can be split across more than one switch in order to achieve switch redundancy. However,
all switch ports that are attached to members of the same team must comprise a single broadcast domain
(in other words, same VLAN)."

The servers are reachable (ie working) as they are configured now. I don't know if load balancing or redundancy is working though.

Is averything working and OK, as long as the VLANs are configured the same on both the switches that the two NICs in each server is connected to? Or is it not possible to get things working without buying the INP license?

Could someone please shed some light on this.
2 REPLIES 2
Ron Kinner
Honored Contributor

Re: Teaming and several VLANs question

More a question for http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/categoryhome.do?categoryId=269

but I can tell you it doesn't matter how many VLANs are on the switches as long as both NICs go into ports that are in the same VLAN.

To check load balancing you should be able to log into the switches and check the port usage to see if you are sending/receiving a similar number of packets on both ports of a pair.

To test the redundancy the best way is to schedule some downtime and just pull one of the network cables and see if the other one picks up the slack.

Ron
dj_farid
Occasional Advisor

Re: Teaming and several VLANs question

Thanks for the reply.
I still think that this might be the right thread for the question though.

I am in a position where it is hard for me to motivate planned downtime on the servers.
Still I would like to understand what HP means with that sentence in the documentation, should everything work as supposed.

That sentence is not in the description for the other "modes" that you can enable if you pay for the license.

If it turns out that things are not working as intended as they are now, I will have to motivate to my bosses why we should pay for the license.
If things are working, I still have to motivate why there is no reason to pay for the license.