Virtual Connect Flex-10 connecting with Cisco 6509 core configuration questions

[chuckk281]

Rino was working with a customer on integrating VC Flex-10 with a Catalyst 6509 switch

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The customer is has 1 single Cisco 6509 core switch and has a c7000 chassis with 2 Flex-10 modules. They currently do not have 10G connectivity in the core switch so will be using (4) 1G connections to each Flex-10 Module for now until they upgrade in the future. They will be using a Microsoft clustered environment of Hyper-V. They will need 4 networks. 1 called Guests that will have multiple(upwards of 10) vlans coming from users on the other side of the core switch. 1 called management that is a VLAN coming from the other side of the core switch and the 2 others called Live Migration and Heartbeat will only be internal to the blade chassis (or VC domain as they grow). These last networks are only used between blades within the chassis.

Since they have only 1 core switch and limited connectivity they have created a single port-channel group of (8) 1G ports on their Cisco 6509. (4) of these ports are connected to the Flex-10 module in bay 1 and (4) of these ports are connected to the Flex-10 module in bay 2. They have created a single shared uplink set containing ports from both flex-10 modules. The result is that the 4 ports on the flex-10 module in bay 1 are active and the 4 ports on the flex-10 module in bay 2 are on standby and inactive. This will not give them the 8G they were hoping for. Is this a supported configuration?

If not then the alternative would be to create (2) port-channels from the Cisco 6509. 1 port-channel to Flex-10 in bay 1 and 1 port-channel to the flex-10 in bay 2. Create (2) Shared uplink sets. They would put mac 1 from flexnic1 and mac 2 from flexnic2 in a network team to be able to better utilize the available bandwidth. They would use Transmit load balancing as the teaming method. Is this a supported configuration? Would the configuration work if they used Switch-assisted Load Balancing to utilize even more of the available bandwidth?

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Rino asked for guidance.

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We looked at the HP VC for Cisco Admin whitepaper and the VC Cookbook and didn't see any reference or examples for this configuration.  The customer has provided more details below on what they are trying to accomplish.  Has anyone ever tried this and can someone provide us guidance as to how to go about setting this up.  My networking skills are limited and your help would be much appreciated.

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Vincent provided the guidance:

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You would split the 8 ports into 2 Shared Uplink Sets with the uplinks off one module in each and use NIC teaming on the servers. There are multiple scenarios in the Cookbook covering this. The last paragraph of your customer's note is exactly right and no they cannot use switch-assisted load balancing, they can only use transmit load balancing.

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Any input on this? What have you done to maximize LAN bandwidth?