NIC Teaming - Sanity Check

[alan_vt]

I was hoping to get a sanity check on a configuration I'm proposing. Networking is my weakest area so please be kind. Here's the scenario.

Two 6509's with four 48-port cards each (10Gb trunk between switches)

DL380 servers with two quad port NIC's

Two vSwitches with 4 uplinks per vSwitch (two ports per quad port NIC)

Here's the real area I'm hoping to get confirmation with. I would like to connect two uplinks to one 6509 on different cards and the other two on the other 6509 on different cards. I'm doing this for redundancy and NOT bandwidth. The idea is I would like to be able to lose a 6509 and still be in business.

I'm not interested in debating the merits on # of vSwitches or number of uplinks. I'm just hoping to get clarification on splitting the vSwitch uplinks between separate physical switches.

Thanks in advance,

Alan

[bggb29]

That should be fine. We have a few 3750's together with the cluster cable. They tie back to a 6509 via 2 line cards.

I have tested mulitple scenarios with nic failure switch failure etc. The only test I have not tried was to pull a line card from the 6509.

I have etherchannel set up and vlan groups on all switches

good luck

[alan_vt]

bggb29,

Thanks for the insight. I think the one part of your configuration that makes it different (and maybe not), is that you're using 3750's in a switch stack configuration. My 6509's have a trunk connection, but are not acting as one large switch like a switch stack does.

~Alan

[weinstein5]

Yes you can - since redundancy is your primary goal you can configure the vSwitch teaming in the vSwitch in a classica Active/Standby role where one port is active and othe ris in standby - if you want both uplink ports to be active you will have to set the NIC teaming policy on the vSwitch to Port Based since the physical switches act independently and you will want the VM traffic to go out a singl uplink port at time since you will not able to spon Etherchannel across both switches -

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