Teaming solution on DL380 G5

[SamMan]

Hello all,
We are running many DL380 servers here and I have come across an issue with Fault Tolerant Teaming. To give you an overview we are using teaming with 2 vlans. One vlan for our core network and the other for our BigIP Load balancing. In the past we set up the NIC for teaming and select the VLAN tags that we require. The network engineers setup the switches for trunking the 2 vlans on each of the switch ports the server is connected to. And in the past the network guys never had to define a native/default vlan in the swicth as the HP software does this and tags all packets. So we have a whole lot of servers out that are set up this way and working. I installed a new server last week with the latest drivers and software/firmware. Now we are experiencing an issue. What is happening is that the VALN that is defined by HP NCU as the default/native vlan does not communicate unless the network guys define a native vlan on the switch. As if the packets for the default vlan are not being tagged. The secondary vlan works perfect and can communicate to all devices but not the primary vlan. I downgraded the NCU and the NIC drivers to an older version from PSP 8.15B and everything was working fine. upgraded to the new PSP and lost communication. What has changed from the older versions on HP NCU to now that requires this type of setup? My concern is that we have many servers that are setup the old way and once we update the NCU and drivers then we are going to have many problems. Has anybody else seen this issue? Any help is appreciated, Thanks.

[Lmm_1 · Accepted solution]

On NCU 9.40 and any other older version, the VLAN selected as native on the NCU will send and recieve tagged traffic, meaning that the traffic for that VLAN must be coming tag from your switch(Non native VLAN on the trunk). On NCU 9.50, there is a fix that will change that behavior. The VLAN selected as Native on the NCU version 9.50 or higher will send and receive untagged traffic only as it should, having said that when you are configuring VLAN tagging on the NCU, the native VLAN on the server and the switch must be the same.

[SamMan]

Thank you Lmm for your post. This all makes sense. I wish HP would have released some advisory on this or at least place it in the release notes as I was unaware of this change. Thanks again for your input.

[SamMan]

Solution from Lmm