[142316] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: VMware ESX LACP Support
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas Magill)
Tue Jun 21 16:05:18 2011
From: Thomas Magill <tmagill@providecommerce.com>
To: Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com>, Manu Chao <linux.yahoo@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:03:55 +0000
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTinggj+pgEQjBnyJKTc45sePaTnubw@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I have to agree with this. Port-channels add no value with the way ESX loa=
d-balances. In fact, we had a few issues arise because of them and convert=
ed everything to native ESX LB.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Hess [mailto:mysidia@gmail.com]=20
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 3:01 PM
To: Manu Chao
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: VMware ESX LACP Support
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Manu Chao <linux.yahoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to design VSS LACP based MECs with ESX hosts.
> Does VMware ESX support LACP?
No, ESX does not support the LACP protocol for control and negotiation of l=
ink aggregation.
Should you want link aggregation, and the default load balancing operation =
of ESX does not meet requirements, it is possible to use a statically conf=
igured
aggregation in non-negotiated ("on") state; or a third party solution.
The standard way to load balance NICs in ESX, is to just plug in additiona=
l NICs to the same network, add the extra pNICs to the same vSwitch, and h=
ave all NICs in 'active' mode.
The default operation is Load balancing based on Originating vSwitch port=
ID.
That is, every time a new vNIC is connected to the vSwitch, it is assigned=
a port ID, which can be used to distribute outgoing traffic from the the v=
NICs among the pNICs, so individual VMs can be load balanced.
> Do we need Nexus 1000 for ESX LACP support?
The Nexus 1000v for ESX has LACP as a supported feature.
The Nexus 1000v is one third party solution for VS link aggregation
for Enterprise Plus ESX environments that use the VDS feature.
VDS is a lot of complexity and expense to add, just to tick a "LACP Support=
" checkbox, however; if you don't also need its other features....
--
-JH
