NIC Teaming, poor / lousy performance..

[_axel_]

I have Proliant DL 380 G6, and regardless of how many cards I have teamed, only one of them is used. None of the others.

I can see in the "TOE-statistics" tab that the team uses 802.3ad, my switch has confirmed the LACP-state of the ports.

I'm not using receive side scaling or 801.2. (all the other options are enabled

The storage i'm using is able to feed 2-3 servers with about 700mbit each, so the problem is not located in switch, nor storage.

[patrick haynes]

you really need to provide some more details, such as:
psp version?
what cards are in what slots?
what kind of teaming (type: ie: network fault tolerance,load balanced..etc)?

[_axel_]

Teaming is "Dynamic, with fault tolerance" (802.3ad ...) .
I'm using the onboard NIC's, and the HP teaming software.

What is psp?

Best regards
/Axel

[patrick haynes]

proliant support pack version?
did you update firmware?

can you confirm the lacp on the switch end shows "active" for at least one port and both of the ports are configured as a trunk?

also are these ports using the default vlan?

are all the ports using the same speed/duplex set statically?

[patrick haynes]

dynamic lacp only has one active nic and the other(s) are going to be standby/failovers, one of the main purposes of lacp is dynamic trunking, the other being redundancy, lacp uses redundancy at the switch level rather than the server/host level.

here's a nice doc

http://www.hp.com/rnd/support/config_examples/2524_lacp.pdf

[_axel_]

Ah, thats why only one NIC is used at a time.

The switch marks the ports used in the team as "active".

I have not updated any firmware at all.
The NIC's are using the default VLAN.

I've used Smartstart 8,20 when I installed the server, have no idea of what Support Pack

Duplex and speed settings are the same, though not set statically.

Tried to change the team type to switch assisted load balancing, with fault tolerance. But no change in bandwith...

Will download latest PSP and install, and update firmware on the onboard NICs.

Best regards
/Axel

[Lmm_1]

Axel,
What type of switch are you using? For 802.3ad team to work properly, all team members must be connected to the same switch, an LACP channel must be configured on the switch. With this team type, all the team members will send and receive traffic. Ports used for the traffic will depend of the load balancing algorithm.

For traffic originated on the server, the load balancing mechanism can be selected from the teaming utility, you can use MAC address, IP address or TCP port, best option will depend of the type of traffic generated to the server (One server to another server, Server to multiple hosts, multiple conversations, etc).

For traffic coming to the server, the load balancing will be defined by the switch, by default most of the switches will use src-dest MAC as their algorithm, depending of the vendor it can be changed.

.Lmm

[_axel_]

LMM: I'm using a cheap 3com Baseline 2948-SFP+ , switch. I have enabled LACP in the switch, and when I set the team to 802.3ad on the server side. Everything is well. I have no idea what the switch does after that.

In the switch I can se that all ports are marked as "active". But still, only one of the NIC's is in use when copying data.

The switch might be the problem, since it's a cheap one =) . But when browsing through the documentation it states that using LACP, the speed of the virtual port, will be the sum of all used ports together.

Got the latest PSP, last night (8.30) but NIC drivers and such was already up to date) .

Best regards
/Axel

[Lmm_1]

If you check the teaming information tab, and all the team members are showing tx/rx, the teaming is ok. Regarding the use of the NICs, it depends of the load balancing algorithm, single coversation between 2 servers, using src-dest MAC as the load balancing algorithm will always use the same NIC.

[_axel_]

Lmm:

I've checked the tab you mentioned, and all the NIC's have a "Rx/Tx" role.

When moving data, only one NIC is used, so I guess that has to do with a crappy switch then.

I'll ask for money to buy a new one =) (maybe you can recommend a "fairly un-managed", with 48 10/100/1000 ports and 4 SFP slots)

Thanks for all help!