VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  Link Aggragation for Cluster

    Posted Dec 09, 2014 07:12 PM

    http://www.sysadmintutorials.com/tutorials/vmware-vsphere-4/vcenter4/network-teaming-with-cisco-etherchannel/


    I used various recourses, but basically followed the procedure seen at the link above. The differences are:


    1.) Our switch is a Cisco Catalyst 2960. It only supports 802.11q, show there is no command to set that encapsulation mode.


    2.) I did not turn on flowcontrol or bpdufiltering


    3.) I created 4 Port-Channels. One to connect to a HP ProCurve Chassis (works fine), and one for each of the three ESXi v5.5 hosts in our VMWare cluster.


    As soon as I completed the Port-Channels for the three ESXi hosts, they lost communications between them-self's and HA started migrating all of the VMs to just one of the hosts. I had to restore the switch's previous configuration and then manually migrate the VMs back to their original hosts.


    I've noticed that all of the example configurations that I've come across only show one Port-Channel being created per switch. So my questions are.


    Q1.) Does a Catalyst 2060 support more than one Port-Channel?


    Q2.) If so, can you create Port-Channels for more than one ESXi host on the same switch?





  • 2.  RE: Link Aggragation for Cluster

    Posted Dec 09, 2014 10:23 PM
    1.) Our switch is a Cisco Catalyst 2960. It only supports 802.11q, show there is no command to set that encapsulation mode.

    For 2960, just use the command switchport mode trunk and the switch will use 802.1q since ISL is no longer supported on 2960.


    2.) I did not turn on flowcontrol or bpdufiltering

    This should work without these settings.


    3.) I created 4 Port-Channels. One to connect to a HP ProCurve Chassis (works fine), and one for each of the three ESXi v5.5 hosts in our VMWare cluster.

    OK... each ESXi will need your own Port-Channel and you can enable CDP to make sure your ESXi vmnic is connected to correct physical Cisco 2960 port.


    As soon as I completed the Port-Channels for the three ESXi hosts, they lost communications between them-self's and HA started migrating all of the VMs to just one of the hosts. I had to restore the switch's previous configuration and then manually migrate the VMs back to their original hosts.

    Did you changed the Load Balancing policy to Route based on IP Hash ?


    Q1.) Does a Catalyst 2060 support more than one Port-Channel?

    Cisco 2960 supports a maximum of 06 (six) port channels.

    Q2.) If so, can you create Port-Channels for more than one ESXi host on the same switch?

    You will need create a Port-Channel to each ESXi, otherwise your configuration will not work.

    I recommend you take a look at this VMware KB article: VMware KB: Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with ESXi/ESX and Cisco/H…



  • 3.  RE: Link Aggragation for Cluster

    Posted Dec 09, 2014 10:49 PM

    OK... each ESXi will need your own Port-Channel and you can enable CDP to make sure your ESXi vmnic is connected to correct physical Cisco 2960 port.

    I did create a Port-Channel for each host. And I'll verify the CDP is enabled.

    Did you changed the Load Balancing policy to Route based on IP Hash ?

    Yes

    I recommend you take a look at this VMware KB article: VMware KB: Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with ESXi/ESX and Cisco/H…

    I've seen this article, but we are using the Standard Virtual Switch, and as I understand, LACP has not been support since ESXi version 5.1.