Load-balancing from two switches to one host.

[Jan Smit_1]

Will the ProCurve3400/6400 support trunks spanning two switches and a host with a multi-nic.
I know that the configuration will work without trunking putting the multi-nic in teaming fault-tolerance mode.
However the trunking feature gives the possibility of load-balancing accross both switches and a smoother transition when one of the switches fails.
If this will not work in the current release are there any plans to add this feature in a future release?

[Sergej Gurenko]

All HP Procurce trunk ports of one group must be on one switch.
Where did you get the information about "smoth transaction"? If you need to have Server to Client (downstream) bandwith you can use Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB)

Here is good doc http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-009747.htm

[rick jones]

I believe that to support active/active to two switches, the bonding/trunking/aggregation software (and the switches) must support "meshing" That is the term the HP-UX Auto Port Aggregation people used when I was asking them about it long ago.

[Matt Hobbs]

With ProLiant servers running the Intelligent Networking Pack, you can perform Dual Channel Teaming which allows 2 different 802.3ad teams to be spanned across switches, yet present to the server as one NIC. (You would need 4 NICs though)

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/networking/inp-advteaming.pdf

There was some previous discussion on this topic as well. I believe Cisco support cross-stack LACP groups:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=962079