CSS - adapter teaming with box-to-box redundancy

dcooke · ‎10-30-2007

Forgive me if someone has asked this before - though I couldn't see anything relevant on a forum search.

I have CSS box-to-box redundancy working fine. The servers we are load balancing have x2 adapters which are teamed with a cable to each CSS.

If one CSS box goes down the other server adapter in the team becomes active. The standby CSS becomes the CSS master etc. Everything is fine.

The problem is when one of the servers is rebooted! Then, the adapter which was previously â€œactiveâ€ in the team and attached to the master CSS always becomes disabled. The other adapter then becomes â€œactiveâ€ but this is attached to the standby CSS. As a result all network connectivity ceases!

The only way to solve it is to switch off the standby CSS during a reboot, or reteam the adapters when they come back up! Both of which are rather impractical.

The adapters are in a Broadcom 802.3ad team. The other â€œintelligent load balancing and redundancyâ€ Broadcom option, just results in both adapters being active and both attempting to send packets. The obviously results in about 50% being dropped as they are sent to the standby CSS.

Surely someone must have come across this before? I hope someone can help?

dcooke · ‎10-31-2007

Is this only possible with a L2 switch that the servers plug into which is then plugged into both CSS's? I notice that this is the config in the example docs. The servers can't be plugged directly into the CSS'es?

sysjes · ‎11-02-2007

since you have an active/standby CSS, I don't believe intelligent load balancing and redundancy buys you anything. Try to Change your teaming mode to network fault tolerant with priority and set up the primary on the active css.

dcooke · ‎11-05-2007

Thanks Sysjes

I managed to solve the problem. I had to set a standby adapter with auto fall back disabled.

Thanks for your time anyway. I couldn't see anyway to mark a reply to my own question as an answer!