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cisco blade svr switch module

dkblee
Level 1
Level 1

hi! i'm running vmware esx svr in my ibm blade svr. Physically the switch module have 4 ports, i've configured it with 2 logical link using etherchannel to my 2 core switches. The individual blade svr have 2 nic interfaces. I'm trying to utilize both link for each of the blade svr? what should i do here in the "internal sw"? Should i do teaming and enable trunk on both nic interface? what's the recommendation and how should i configure it?

Thanks.

2 Replies 2

mattwilsonuk
Level 1
Level 1

Teaming on the server and use LACP on the core switch (etherchannel).

Depending on the NIC you should have options to choose generic trunking, LACP or SLB (server load balancing)

If the options are not the same on both ends you will not acheive the full throughput.

Generic trunking uses one nic for data throughput and the other port for redundancy.

LACP uses both ports to send data and achieves the highest throughput.

To ensure you achieve the best results, my advice is to read the manual provided by the NIC manufacturer.

We have broadcom nic's on ours which supports full LACP.

Cheers

Matt

we implemented this about 2 years ago with a recent major upgrade to the network infrastructure on our bladecenter to allow vlans. what we recently did was implement a dual core with 4506s and configured 2 4 gig etherchannel (all 4 ports on blade switch module)to the bladecenter switches. we also trunked the new vlans that we'd be using for iSCSI, Service Console, and the VM Server vlans to the bladecenter switch and all of the virtual switchports on those 2 blade switch modules that connect to the physical bladecenter servers/esx hosts. Within VCenter, we created one vSS and added BOTH ESX host NICs to it with an Active/Standby. (don't add both in active without failover or team because it will crash the ESX Host!!! lol). It is possible to team the physical ESX host NICs, vmnics, but we haven't tinkered with it yet. You also want to add all of the port groups to the individual vSS on every ESX host. We want to upgrade to the vDS or Nexus, but we have to upgrade to enterprise Plus on vmware.

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