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Active/Active etherchanel between Cisco switches and other hosts

cisco_lite
Level 1
Level 1

I have two Cat6500 in redundancy. I would like to connect Server NIC1 to Cat6500 1 and Server NIC2 to Cat6500 2 i.e. Active/Active. Both NIC's will be sending data.

Is it possible with Cisco switches. Any Cisco link will be helpful.

Thanks

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Edison Ortiz
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Is it possible with Cisco switches.

I'm afraid is not possible.

On an Active/Active design the NIC(s) will send the switch a single MAC Address and Switch 1 and Switch 2 will receive conflicting information.

HTH,

__

Edison.

View solution in original post

8 Replies 8

Edison Ortiz
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Is it possible with Cisco switches.

I'm afraid is not possible.

On an Active/Active design the NIC(s) will send the switch a single MAC Address and Switch 1 and Switch 2 will receive conflicting information.

HTH,

__

Edison.

Edison,

What if the NIC team is using transmit load balancing where both NICs can send but only one receives??

Once they send traffic, the MAC Address will be listed in the switch's CAM table.

If the MAC Address that is sent from the NICs are different, then you don't need to do anything at the switch - no etherchannel is needed.

If the MAC Address that is sent from the NICs are the same, then etherchannel is needed but etherchannel is not supported when each member of the etherchannel in the switch side represents a separate logical chassis.

I said logical, because you can deploy etherchannel on 3750 and 6500 VSS on different physical chassis but they are one logical chassis.

HTH,

__

Edison.

Right. I guess I wasn't clear from looking at the OP's post whether or not he/she wanted link aggregation or just a nic team.

It is possible to have an Active/Active port-channel design in this scenario going to two Cisco switches. It works when using the Nexus 7K platform with VPCs.

Mike

mschultz
Level 1
Level 1

Do you have the VSS supervisor in your 6500's?

Multi-chassis Etherchannel is supported on the 6500 if you are using a VSS-enabled supervisor. Likewise, it is supported on the Nexus 7000 using Virtual port-channels.

In order to do redundant NIC's on two switches for one server, you need switches that are bonded together. You choices are:

Cisco 3750 series switches stacked

Cisco 6500 series switches with the VSS supervisor cards in each.

Cisco Nexus series switches (I am not very familiar with these switches but it is one of their main selling points)

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