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  • 1.  NIC Team for Dell Poweredge 630 ESXi7U3

    Posted Nov 21, 2022 02:24 PM

    Hi All,

    Hope all is well. i have this problem with my Dell Poweredge 630 NIC Cards when i installed ESXi 7U3 and tried to NIC Team my 4 port NIC Card and try to join them in 1 channel group in cisco core switch but everytime i bundle the 4 ports in the NIC my whole network will bug down and all users will loose their connection from the internet and even from the local network.

    i have tried splitting my MGMT network vmnic (vmnic0) and VMWare network vmnic (vmnic1,vmnic2,vmnic3) and nic team the 3 ports it in ESXi but still got the same problem. so now i just share the mgmt network and vm nework in 1 vmnic0 without NIC teaming and it works but the downside is the speed is only 1GB for both so it kind of slow compared to NIC teaming.

    My question is:

    1) how to determine the brand and model of my NIC Cards? in ESXi it says "ntg3"is the driver.

    2) is this something on the ESXi side or dell side?

    Hope i can get answers on this one.

     

    Thank you and more power.



  • 2.  RE: NIC Team for Dell Poweredge 630 ESXi7U3

    Posted Nov 21, 2022 04:04 PM

    If you select Host->Configure->Phys. Adapters you will see the Adapter

    IRIX201110141_0-1669042919940.png

    Otherwise.... grab the Dell ServiceTag and visit dell.com/support and enter the STAG on the left. On the right there is a link like "system specification" and you will see a inventory list how the server has left the factory. Most likely you have a Broadcom/Qlogic NIC because of the use of the tigon3? driver your ESXi use.

    About your port channel questions.  Creating a LAG require configuration on both sides and this is the reason why you loose connection to ESXi as soon as you configured your cisco.
    I only create LAGs when having a vDS and for my understanding its not possible with a vSS but iam note 100% sure here.

    If you think that you can increase the "speed" of your nic than please read Networking 101 again;) Under certain circumstances its possible to increase the bandwith when having multiple sender or receiver on one of the sites. But when having only one at each side you you will see nothing because of you cant split a single tcp session.

     

     



  • 3.  RE: NIC Team for Dell Poweredge 630 ESXi7U3

    Posted Nov 21, 2022 05:39 PM

    Hello!

    Are you using vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) or vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)? If you use VSS you only use:

    - Route based on originating virtual port (default)
    - Route based on source MAC hash
    - Use explict failover order
    - Route based on IP hash (!this is not LACP!)

    If you use VDS you can create LACP Channels but i would not recommend it. I would stick to "Route based on originating virtual port" on VSS and "Route based on physical NIC load" on VDS or the default "Route based on originating virtual port".

    On Cisco side the Ports are Configured as Trunk Ports and you can use all four Nics as Active Uplinks in VSS (same on VDS).

    There is a good Mapping Table https://haystacknetworks.com/aci-nx-os-vmware-interface-bundling-mapping

    And the Overview for the Load Balancing Algorithms: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-959E1CFE-2AE4-4A67-B4D4-2D2E13765715.html

    Regards,
    Robert