Why I should place a NIC in Standby?

[Jain]

Can somebody explain me the scenario where placing NICs on standby is required

[ab_lal]

Hi

Go to configuration -> networking

Click on properties of the vswitch

In the ports tab Select vSwitch and click on Edit

Go to NIC teaming Tab, You might find your vmnics in Active adapters.

Select the one which needs to be a standby adapter and Click on Move Down.

Click Ok

Anand Mewalal

[Jain]

Hi Anand,

Thanks for replay, I know how to setup standby adapter

I am curious about the reason/scenarios where I need to setup standby NICs

~ Jain # VCP 4

[ab_lal]

Sorry for the hasty reply... Generally, I don't use active / standby adapters. We keep them as active so that the vSwitch can handle load balancing.

[Paul11]

It may be useful if you have uplinks with different speeds. We use a Flex-10 VirtualConnect Module from HP, where you can define any Uplink Speed you need. So we have an active path with 7,5 Mbit and a standby path with 1 Gbit for failover. I don't know another reason for standby.

[Duncan Epping]

Why? http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/04/09/kens-view-on-service-console-redundancy-and-my-take/

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[rteglgaa]

Sure... if you have two uplinks that connect to two individual switches. You can't load-balance this way (usually though some vendors has support for this), so you put one port in standby and make one active. If the active fails, your esx will start using the standby adapter.

So to make it short: to take advantage of redundancy even though you can't run load-balancing.

/Rasmus

[kac2]

take a look here at picture #2 http://kendrickcoleman.no-ip.org/index.php/Tech-Blog/vsphere-host-nic-configuration.html

I use 2 NICs.

1 for Service Console = Active / vMotion = Stand-by

1 for vMotion = Active / Service Console = Stand-by

I do this so I have control over how traffic is sent. There is also the difference in types of NICs. if you have on-board Broadcom NICs and Intel NICs for expansion cards, there are times when things don't align properly such as flow control. By minimalizing risks such as these you are better off telling your server where to send traffic during uptime and where to go if that NIC fails, ie. Stand-by