VMWare and 802.3ad

[Anonymous]

Will this be supported? This is from VMWare's site on the dual nic setup -

• ESXi/ESX host only supports NIC teaming on a single physical switch or stacked switches.
• Link aggregation is never supported on disparate trunked switches.
• The switch must be set to perform 802.3ad link aggregation in static mode ON and the virtual switch must have its load balancing method set to Route based on IP hash.  Ensure that the participating NICs are connected to the ports configured on the same physical switch.
• Enabling either Route based on IP hash without 802.3ad aggregation or vice-versa disrupts networking, so you must make the changes to the virtual switch first. That way, the service console is not available, but the physical switch management interface is, so you can enable aggregation on the ports involved to restore networking.
• For more information on ESXi/ESX networking concepts, see the VMware Virtual Networking Concepts.
• For more information on VLAN configuration for NIC teaming, see VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines (1003806).
• To configure NIC teaming on ESXi/ESX and a physical switch, see Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link aggregation with ESX/ESXi and Cisco/HP switches (1004048....
• The only load balancing option for vSwitch or vDistributed Switch that can be used with EtherChannel is IP HASH.
• Do not use beacon probing with IP HASH load balancing.
• Do not configure standby or unused uplinks with IP HASH load balancing.
• VMware supports only one Etherchannel bond per Virtual Standard Switch (vSS). When using Virtual Distributed Switches (vDS), each ESXi/ESX host can only have only one etherchannel bond configured per vDS.
• ESXi 5.1 and 5.5 supports LACP on VDS only. For more information, see Enabling or disabling LACP on an Uplink Port Group using the vSphere Web Client (2034277).

I have done link aggregation before between switches and PC's and I know LACP is not supported, but is what they are asking for requirements in line with what the Adtran's do? They currently are using older HP switches. Thanks! - Jeremy

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

- Thanks for posting your question on the forum!

The biggest issue I see is that load-balancing in AOS uses a hash of the MAC address instead of the IP address. However, I do not see anything else that would cause issues with this.

More information regarding link aggregation can be found in this document: Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) in AOS

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Noor

[Anonymous]

kb9mfd:

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Thanks,

Levi