LACP Etherchannel

antonios · ‎11-03-2005

Hi,

We have a customer that is running an LACP etherchannel consisting of 8 interfaces between two servers, these servers back up to one another, what we find is that optimal use is not made of the eight links when the backup runs.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can distribute the load a little more evenly across the eight channels.

I have played around with the port-channel balance command but have not seen any significant improvements

Thanks

ankurbhasin · ‎11-03-2005

Hi Antonio,

The etherchannel works as per its algorithm and depending upon the mac address last bit learned on any ports it load balanced which is not always equal.

Can you play with frame distribution on the basis of mac address or ip address.

Check this link for more details

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/sw_6_3/confg_gd/channel.htm

Regards,

Ankur

glen.grant · ‎11-03-2005

Your best bet would be to load balance on the outgoing ip address I would think , seeing that the traffic is only going to 2 servers . Also I would think you would have to look at the servers and see if there etherchannel load balance parameters on that end , it's a 2 way street so to speak.

antonios · ‎11-03-2005

hi glen,

The traffic is running between two servers so whether the load balancing algorithm hashing is based on source or destination ip or mac, with only two devices these hashing parameters will always be the same and therefore the same link in the etherchannel will always be reused.

Cheers