Help with proper configuration on redundancy

[Jazsko]

Hi,

We have a VMware infrastructuer with 3 ESXi hosts 4.1 and two Equallogic ps4000, one with SAS and one With SATA discs.

This is all connected with 2 switches, where everything is connected so the redundancy “should” work.

On ESXi server we have 8 NIc ports, in vCenter we used 2 Nics for management and vmotion, 2 for iScsi traffic and 2 for VLAN network access.

Some time ago, one of our switches failed, and all VM’s restarted because they lost connection, 2-3 min later they came back on using the other switch, but this should have not happened. I did a little research, and found out that NIC teaming maybe wasn’t configured probably.

On vSwitch 2 where my Iscsi traffic goes, I used one VMkernel port on both nics, this should work, right? What have I done wrong? Anyone has any idea, what configuration should be on NIC teaming to make this work.

After a bit of struggling I clicked on propreties on vSwitch 2, clicked edit on VMkernel port ISCSi, to hget to policy exepotions in nic teaming configuration. Network failover detection: Link status only, notify switches: yes, failback : no.

When I disconnected the cable, vmwares worked, when I disconnected the swich, vm’s wored. I heared that when using to nics, I should create to vmkernel ports on that vswitch to use redundancy, is this right? I also thought that the port group ISCSI traffic would inherit the rights of nicteaming, but this doesn’t happen for some reason. Anyone has any idea what the best practice is when configuring Redundancy with several nics in vCenter?

Thx for all the help.

[idle-jam]

see if this helps you out: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/18/iscsi-multipathing-with-esxcliexploring-the-next-version-of-esx/

[AndreTheGiant]

See also the best practices documents available on Equallogic and DellTech sites.

[Slingsh0t]

Bit of an old thread but in the possibility it hasn't been resolved, here is your answer:

With Equallogic units, you will have to setup a vmkernel port per physical uplink.

1 vSwitch

2 physical nics (vmnic3, vmnic4 for example)

2 vmkernel ports

   ---- vmk1 -> override failover set with vmnic3 as active and vmnic4 unused

   ---- vmk2 -> override failover set with vmnic4 as active and vmnic3 unused

Bind vmkernel ports to software iscsi hba and configure storage.  To improve performance configure jumbo frames on all vswitches, switches and vmk's.