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Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

 
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Mi6t0
Trusted Contributor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hello, Thomas.

And did you try setting it to Transmit load balancing? Is it the same behaviour?
hpabc
Advisor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hello,

I have set it to Transmist Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance. But i am also facing same problem. I am not getting RX on one of the two NICs and due to which the users connecting to this server are being disconnected for few seconds by itself and connects again, which causes the user PCs to hang.

I have set the speed/duplex to 1000/full and set the speed on switch to 1000 manually on both ports.

While copying 500MB of files from and to server is similar, like 1 min apprx.

The information shows one of the NIC role as Tx/Rx with Group- 0 / Member id- 0.
The information of the other NIC role as Tx Only with Group- 1 / Member id- 1.

Also the peak usage of the Rx in percent is nearly 1-2% and sending is hardly 1%.

I have not installed the latest drivers. Could this resolve this problem ?

Please guide.

Thanks,

hpabc.
Thomas VIE
Occasional Advisor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

@mi6t0: in the current configuration i have 2 GBit RX and TX, Transmit Load Balancing would be just 1 GBit for RX and 2 GBit for TX.

@hpabc: with the setting for Transmit Load Balancing one of the Adapters work for TX Only and just one for RX and TX - the adapter with TX only will not get any RX traffic in this configuration.
hpabc
Advisor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hi,

Thanks for reply.

Yes, with TLB the receiving traffic is not load balanced. The Primary teamed port is responsible for receiving all traffic destined for the server.

So things does not look awkward with TLB settings on the NIC. But users complain slow connections sometimes. I am out of ideas.

Thanks

hpabc.
hpabc
Advisor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hi,

Thanks for clearing that.

Yes, with TLB the receiving traffic is not load balanced. The Primary teamed port is responsible for receiving all traffic destined for the server.

So things does not look awkward with TLB settings on the NIC. But users complain slow connections sometimes. I am out of ideas.

Thanks

hpabc.
KarloChacon
Honored Contributor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

hi

I was doing more research about this capability on Cisco switches which called Fast EtherChannel (FEC) mode or Gigabit EtherChannel (GEC) that let us to use SLB
here is the information with the cisco 3560:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3560/software/release/12.1_19_ea1/configuration/guide/swethchl.html

regards
Didn't your momma teach you to say thanks!
Connery
Trusted Contributor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hi Thomas,
I'm an engineer from the development group responsible for ProLiant networking products (i.e. NIC Teaming).

Two things to check: 1) switch's channel configuration 2) switch's load balancing algorithm.

1) In order to achieve receive load balancing, you need to verify that your switch is setup for EtherChanneling.

You mentioned that the Cisco is configured for Trunking, however, on the Cisco switches the term "Trunking" refers to "VLAN tagging". "EtherChannel" or just "channeling" refers to bonding multiple ports together for load balancing.

On the ports in question on the Switch, your configuration should look something like this:

(assumes you are using IOS, switch ports are ports 10 & 11, and unused port channel number is selected).

interface range 0/10 - 0/11
switchport mode access
channel-group 10 mode on

2) If you have confirmed that the channeling configuration is correct and you are still not achieving receive load balancing, the problem may be the switch's load balancing algorithm. Make sure the switch is set to load balance by source & destination IP address.

My guess is that most, if not all, of your clients are on the other side of a router from your server. If that is the case, then all of the packets from the clients pass through the router to get to the server. As the packets pass through the router, the router encapsulates them inside of ethernet frames (something we all already know). Anyway, the router always inserts it's own MAC address as the source MAC address of all frames (from all clients). In other words, all client frames come from the router's MAC address. Since the 3560's default load balancing algorithm is to load balance by source MAC address, all frames coming from the router are sent down a single port in the channel. As a result, all client traffic is transmitted to the server over a single link in the channel group. To effectively load balance the client traffic, the switch needs to be changed to load balance based on Source & Destination IP address. That way, as long as either the source or destination IP address changes, a new port in the channel can be selected and load balancing can be achieved.

To change the load balancing algorithm to be based on Source & Destination IP address, use the command "port-channel load-balance src-dst-ip" in Global Configuration.

Feel free to attach your switch config if you'd like us to verify the configuration. Be sure to include the port numbers you are using.

Best regards,
-sean

Network Architect, CCIE #18040
philippjaeger
Visitor

Re: Problem with Network Teaming and Receive Load Balancing

Hi Sean,

are you still available?

I have a customer with a very similar situation/problem regarding nic teaming and not getting any Receive traffic load balanced over both NICs.

 

Customer test traffic is only between ProLiants connected to one ProCurve Switch. Can you let me know what config data you exactly would need in order to figure out why traffic sticks to one NIC only all the time?

 

Thanks & Regards,

Phil