HP 1810-24G (non procurve) and ESXI/vSphere

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi,

I have the HP 1810-24G switch (not the Procurve version, so no cli or anything) and I want to connect several ESXI 6.5 machines to it. I talked to few people and the general advice is that all the ports that I connect to the ESXI - should be defined as "trunk" and do everything else on the ESXI/vCenter..

My switch doesn't have many options, and as far as trunk goes, it got  only 1 section which is in the attached screenshot, so do I only type a new name for a trunk and select the ports to the corresponding TRK number? (for example: trunk1, TRK 1 and selecting ports with the radio-buttons 10-18)

Thanks

[parnassus]

Here Trunk means Port Trunking (in HP jargon doing Port Trunking equals to aggregating multiple similar interfaces by creating a BAGG logical interface, also known as LAG logical interface)...if so, on VMware ESXi 6.5 you have pretty limited choice in terms of NIC Teaming Mode and Load Balancing algorithm to chose when networking is performed through vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) compared to vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS): LACP (IEEE 802.3ad) works with VDS only...that means you can only use non protocol trunking (and that is labelled as "Static" choice on the 1810 see [*] and [**] for Trunk configurations) if VSS is what you have on your ESXi side...so if you don't have VDS then forget about chosing LACP for Port Trunk(s)...LACP should be available as "LACP Active" or "LACP Passive" choices on the 1810...so it should be clear the difference between Trunk mode choices.

ESXi side the NIC Teaming Mode should be set with the proper Load Balancing algorithm: with vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) implementation the Load Balancing algorithm should be set to "Route based on IP Hash" - instead of the default "Route based on the originating virtual port ID" - but probably there are specific limitations [*] due to 1810 Web GUI compared to other switches offering CLI support (1810 should support only a load sharing mode based on Layer 2/MAC Address globally so the ESXi Load Balancing Algorithm should be changed accordingly to "Route based on Source MAC Hash" instead of the above suggested "Route based on IP Hash").

[*] see here.

[**] see here.

[***] Reference here.

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi @parnassus, thanks for this great answer and the links!

I'm not looking to aggregeate multiple ports (maybe later). What I am looking is to make the ports "dumb" so I could manage all the VLAN's through ESXi, and their routing will come from a PFSense VM.

Looking at O'reilly Network admin for ESXI video, they're giving few terms, I'm not sure "tagging" to the physical switch would help in this case since I want to do all the VLAN stuff on the ESXI only.

I'm enclosing a picture from their video, perhaps it would help to explain what I mean..

[parnassus]

That's typical Cisco terminology where the word trunk is used to define/refer to an interface that will carry (permit) multiple VLANs...in HP world that is done by tagging VLAN IDs on the required interfaces (tagging a physical/logical port)...and that, as you discovered, has nothing to do with Port Trunking (aggregation) I described...so you shouldn't use the 1810 Trunk GUI configuration page (trunk=aggregation) but instead look at IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging configuration available on physical ports (eventually logical - if you will end up with one or more BAGG(s) to ESXi - is possible too) that will be used to connect to your ESXi host.

Read this nice post about HP versus Cisco terminology confusion.

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Yeah, I thought about that, but for example, if I create VLAN 100, 101, 103 on ESXI, won't I need to do all the work again using the GUI on the physical switch?

[parnassus · Accepted solution]

It all depends on which type of VLAN tagging method you want to deploy on your VLAN aware ESXi host (and, consequently, on the physical Switch connected to it).

See this VMware KB Article (beware that trunk word is used referring to Cisco terminology and meaning): EST, VST or VGT...I think you're planning VST, Switch side you should tag ports accordingly (forget about 1810 Trunk, concentrate into VLAN - partially some tips can visually be found here especially regarding to VLAN port tagging).