2910al - DL380 Load Balancing/Trunking

[CBE]

I have a DL380 server with a Quad Port Gigabit adapter, I wish to use two of the Ports to get a 2Gb (TX + RX) link to a 2910al ProCurve.

At the moment my configuration is...

DL380 - HP NCU - 2 x Ports Teamed with "Switch-Assisted Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance"

2910al - 2 x Ports Trunked (Trunk Type = "Trunk" LACP Status = "Disabled")

With this configuration I am able to get Load Balanced Transmit traffic but any Received traffic does not appear to be load balanced.

Am I correct in thinking that this is down to the switch configuration?

I would like to know the best way to configure everything for maximum Transmit and Receive speed.

Thanks

[Gerhard Roets]

Hi CBE

You want to look trunks and LACP aka 802.3ad which is available in the HP network utility.

Basically you would set the server to 802.3ad in the utility and on the switch. Assuming you have port 1 & 2 for it.

trunk 1,2 trk1 lacp

Then you can do vlan tagging on the trunk.

HTH

[CBE]

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried the recommended configuration and it still seems that the received traffic is not being Load Balanced. Only one Port is showing received traffic within the HP NCU on the server.

However as before the transmitted traffic is being balanced.

Is this behavior normal?

[Gerhard Roets]

Can you post the output of "show trunk" and verify you are using 802.3ad on the server in NCU.

Also what kind of traffic is it ? Multicast, Microsoft NLB or anything interesting about the server config.

Because broadcast traffic is always transmitted on one leg of the trunk. Bearing in mind multicast traffic still has the "IS Group" bit set in the MAC address.

HTH

[CBE]

I have attached a screenshot. There are actually 2 Trunks and 2 DL380s configured in the same way.

The DL380s are Server2008R2 with Hyper-V.

The tests I have done have been with file transfers between the 2 DL380s and between a DL380 and DL140. File transfers between the guest VMs also behave in the same way.

[Gerhard Roets]

Hi CBE

You might want to look at the last bit in
http://cdn.procurve.com/training/Manuals/2910-MCG-Feb09-12-PortTrunk.pdf

But from your config set "Transmit load balancing to" to either automatic or by TCP Connection. The current setting will especially bite you if you deal with routed traffic.