NIC teaming in OVM

Hi folks,
Does Oracle VM support NIC Teaming(Bonding of more than 1 NICs in to 1 Logical NIC)? Does it require any driver or patch for the same.
I have SUN server x4710 which has 2 NIC cards.
Moreover If I ve VMs(guests) with IPs of different VLANs(Eg. 10.22.70.x and 202.49.214.x) residing on same VM server what would be the best practice?
Hope fully I have made the points clear..
Thanks in advance...

user10310678 wrote:
Does Oracle VM support NIC Teaming(Bonding of more than 1 NICs in to 1 Logical NIC)? Does it require any driver or patch for the same.Yes it does support bonding and no, it doesn't require any additional drivers or patches. Bonding is built into the kernel.
Moreover If I ve VMs(guests) with IPs of different VLANs(Eg. 10.22.70.x and 202.49.214.x) residing on same VM server what would be the best practice?I usually create a bridge per VLAN. That way, I can create a virtual interface to a guest that is already on a particular VLAN and the guest doesn't have to worry about VLANs. Also, it means you can control VLAN assignments outside the guest OS. See this wiki page for more info:
http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Oracle+VM+Server+Configuration-bondedand+trunked+network+interfaces

Similar Messages

Server 2012 R2 Crashes with NIC Team

Server 2012 R2 Core configured for Hyper-V. Using 2-port 10Gbe Brocades, we want to use NIC teaming for guest traffic. Create the team... seems fine. Create the virtual switch in Hyper-V, and assign it to the NIC team... seems fine. Create
a VM, assign the network card to the Virtual switch... still doing okay. Power on the VM... POOF! The host BSOD's. If I remove the switch from the VM, I can run the VM from the console, install the OS, etc... but as soon as I reassign the virtual
NIC to the switch, POOF! Bye-bye again. Any ideas here?
Thank you in advance!
EDIT: A little more info... Two 2-port Brocades and two Nexus 5k's. Running one port on NIC1 to one 5k, and one port on NIC2 to the other 5k. NIC team is using Switch Independent Mode, Address Hash load balancing, and all adapters active.

Hi,
Have you updated the NIC driver to latest?
If issue persists after updating the driver, we can use WinDbg to analyze a crash dump.
If the NIC driver cause the BSOD, please consult the NIC manufacture about this issue.
For detailed information about how to analyze a crash dump, please refer to the link below,
http://blogs.technet.com/b/juanand/archive/2011/03/20/analyzing-a-crash-dump-aka-bsod.aspx
Best Regards.
Steven Lee
TechNet Community Support

Windows 7/8.0/8.1 NIC teaming issue

Hello,
I'm having an issue with Teaming network adapters in all recent Windows client OSs.
I'm using Intel Pro Dual Port or Broadcom NetExtreme II GigaBit adapters with the appropriate drivers/applications from the vendors.
I am able to set up teaming and fail-over works flawlessly, but the connection will not use the entire advertised bandwidth of 2Gbps. Basically it will use either one port or the other.
I'm doing the testing with the iperf tool and am communicating with a unix based server.
I have the following setup:
Dell R210 II server with 2 Broadcom NetEtreme II adapters and a DualPort Intel Pro adapter - Centos 6.5 installed bonding configured and working wile communicating with other unix based systems.
Zyxel GS2200-48 switch - Link Aggregation configured and working
Dell R210 II with Windows 8.1 with Broadcom NetExtreme II cards or Intel Pro dualport cards.
For the Windows machine I have also tried Windows 7 and Windows 8, also non server type hardware with identical results.
so.. Why am I not getting > 1 Gbps throughput on the created team? although load balancing is activated, team adapter says the connection type is 2 Gbps, a the same setup with 2 unix machines works flawlessly.
Am I to understand that Link Aggregation (802.3ad) under Microsoft OS does not support load balancing if connection is only towards one IP?
To make it clear, I need client version of Windows OS to communicate unix based OS over a higher then 1Gbps bandwidth (as close to 2 Gbps as possible). Without the use of 10 Gbps network adapters.
Thanks in advance,
Endre

As v-yamliu has mentioned, NIC teaming through the operating system is
only available in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. For Windows Client or for previous versions of Windows Server you will need to create the team via the network driver. For Broadcom this is accomplished
using the Broadcom Advanced Server Program (BASP) as documented here and
for Intel via Advanced Network Services as documented here.
If you have configured the team via the drivers, you may need to ensure the driver is properly installed and updated. You may also want to ensure that the adapters are configured for aggregation (802.3ad/802.1ax/LACP), rather than fault tolerance or load
balancing and that the teaming configuration on the switch matches and is compatible with the server configuration. Also ensure that all of the links are connecting at full duplex as this is a requirement.
Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

Nic Teaming in guest OS

We have 4 ESX Servers each containing 4 gig nics for production traffic. These are teamed to form a 4Gb pipe to the Cisco Switch. Our guest VM's are windows 2008 rc2 and my issue is that i need to find out if its possible to team nics within the windows 2008 vm's.
We have physical windows 2008 servers with same network config as in 4 physical nics teamed to form 4gb pipe to cisco switch
If i copy a 5GB file from one physical server to another physical server it takes about 70 seconds (which is great). If i copy the same file from one of the physical servers to one of my VM servers it takes over 3 minutes (not good).
If i copy the same file between 2 servers on the same ESX host it also takes over 3 minutes (not good)
If my theory is sound then i think the bottleneck is the fact that my VM servers only have a 1Gb nic so ideally i'd like to be able to team a pair of nics in a VM and redo the test.
Any information on how to team nics within guest vm's would be appreciated.
thanks

Depending on the switch load balancing policy you can force each virtual NIC to use a separate physical NIC. If you have a piece of software which implements the the LB in the guest (as the VMware drivers don't implement this) you'll be able to achieve Transmit Load Balancing (TLB). Failover is implemented on the vSwitch layer.
IMHO this benefit is a theoretical one as other guest are using these physical NIC's also load distributed, as well.
For real load balancing you should have physical switches which support one of the LB protocols available.
AWo
\[:o]===\[o:]
=Would you like to have this posting as a ringtone on your cell phone?=
=Send "Posting" to 911 for only $999999,99!=

VMQ issues with NIC Teaming

Hi All
Apologies if this is a long one but I thought the more information I can provide the better.
We have recently designed and built a new Hyper-V environment for a client, utilising Windows Server R2 / System Centre 2012 R2 however since putting it into production, we are now seeing problems with Virtual Machine Queues. These manifest themselves as
either very high latency inside virtual machines (we’re talking 200 – 400 mSec round trip times), packet loss or complete connectivity loss for VMs. Not all VMs are affected however the problem does manifest itself on all hosts. I am aware of these issues
having cropped up in the past with Broadcom NICs.
I'll give you a little bit of background into the problem...
Frist, the environment is based entirely on Dell hardware (Equallogic Storage, PowerConnect Switching and PE R720 VM Hosts). this environment was based on Server 2012 and a decision was taken to bring this up to speed to R2. This was due to a number
of quite compelling reasons, mainly surrounding reliability. The core virtualisation infrastructure consists of four VM hosts in a Hyper-V Cluster.
Prior to the redesign, each VM host had 12 NICs installed:
Quad port on-board Broadcom 5720 daughter card: Two NICs assigned to a host management team whilst the other two NICs in the same adapter formed a Live Migration / Cluster heartbeat team, to which a VM switch was connected with two vNICs exposed to the
management OS. Latest drivers and firmware installed. The Converged Fabric team here was configured in LACP Address Hash (Min Queues mode), each NIC having the same two processor cores assigned. The management team is identically configured.
Two additional Intel i350 quad port NICs: 4 NICs teamed for the production VM Switch uplink and 4 for iSCSI MPIO. Latest drivers and firmware. The VM Switch team spans both physical NICs to provide some level of NIC level fault tolerance, whilst the remaining
4 NICs for ISCSI MPIO are also balanced across the two NICs for the same reasons.
The initial driver for upgrading was that we were once again seeing issues with VMQ in the old design with the converged fabric design. The two vNics in the management OS for each of these networks were tagged to specific VLANs (that were obviously accessible
to the same designated NICs in each of the VM hosts).
In this setup, a similar issue was being experienced to our present issue. Once again, the Converged Fabric vNICs in the Host OS would on occasion, either lose connectivity or exhibit very high round trip times and packet loss. This seemed to correlate with
a significant increase in bandwidth through the converged fabric, such as when initiating a Live Migration and would then affect both vNICS connectivity. This would cause packet loss / connectivity loss for both the Live Migration and Cluster Heartbeat vNICs
which in turn would trigger all sorts of horrid goings on in the cluster. If we disabled VMQ on the physical adapters and the team multiplex adapter, the problem went away. Obviously disabling VMQ is something that we really don’t want to resort to.
So…. The decision to refresh the environment with 2012 R2 across the board (which was also driven by other factors and not just this issue alone) was accelerated.
In the new environment, we replaced the Quad Port Broadcom 5720 Daughter Cards in the hosts with new Intel i350 QP Daughter cards to keep the NICs identical across the board. The Cluster heartbeat / Live Migration networks now use an SMB Multichannel configuration,
utilising the same two NICs as in the old design in two isolated untagged port VLANs. This part of the re-design is now working very well (Live Migrations now complete much faster I hasten to add!!)
However…. The same VMQ issues that we witnessed previously have now arisen on the production VM Switch which is used to uplink the virtual machines on each host to the outside world.
The Production VM Switch is configured as follows:
Same configuration as the original infrastructure: 4 Intel 1GbE i350 NICs, two of which are in one physical quad port NIC, whilst the other two are in an identical NIC, directly below it. The remaining 2 ports from each card function as iSCSI MPIO
interfaces to the SAN. We did this to try and achieve NIC level fault tolerance. The latest Firmware and Drivers have been installed for all hardware (including the NICs) fresh from the latest Dell Server Updates DVD (V14.10).
In each host, the above 4 VM Switch NICs are formed into a Switch independent, Dynamic team (Sum of Queues mode), each physical NIC has
RSS disabled and VMQ enabled and the Team Multiplex adapter also has RSS disabled an VMQ enabled. Secondly, each NIC is configured to use a single processor core for VMQ. As this is a Sum of Queues team, cores do not overlap
and as the host processors have Hyper Threading enabled, only cores (not logical execution units) are assigned to RSS or VMQ. The configuration of the VM Switch NICs looks as follows when running Get-NetAdapterVMQ on the hosts:
Name                           InterfaceDescription
Enabled BaseVmqProcessor MaxProcessors NumberOfReceive
Queues
VM_SWITCH_ETH01                Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t A...#8 True    0:10             1
7
VM_SWITCH_ETH03                Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t A...#7 True    0:14             1
7
VM_SWITCH_ETH02                Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Ada... True    0:12             1
7
VM_SWITCH_ETH04                Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t A...#2 True    0:16             1
7
Production VM Switch           Microsoft Network Adapter Mult... True    0:0
28
Load is hardly an issue on these NICs and a single core seems to have sufficed in the old design, so this was carried forward into the new.
The loss of connectivity / high latency (200 – 400 mSec as before) only seems to arise when a VM is moved via Live Migration from host to host. If I setup a constant ping to a test candidate VM and move it to another host, I get about 5 dropped pings
at the point where the remaining memory pages / CPU state are transferred, followed by an dramatic increase in latency once the VM is up and running on the destination host. It seems as though the destination host is struggling to allocate the VM NIC to a
queue. I can then move the VM back and forth between hosts and the problem may or may not occur again. It is very intermittent. There is always a lengthy pause in VM network connectivity during the live migration process however, longer than I have seen in
the past (usually only a ping or two are lost, however we are now seeing 5 or more before VM Nework connectivity is restored on the destination host, this being enough to cause a disruption to the workload).
If we disable VMQ entirely on the VM NICs and VM Switch Team Multiplex adapter on one of the hosts as a test, things behave as expected. A migration completes within the time of a standard TCP timeout.
VMQ looks to be working, as if I run Get-NetAdapterVMQQueue on one of the hosts, I can see that Queues are being allocated to VM NICs accordingly. I can also see that VM NICs are appearing in Hyper-V manager with “VMQ Active”.
It goes without saying that we really don’t want to disable VMQ, however given the nature of our clients business, we really cannot afford for these issues to crop up. If I can’t find a resolution here, I will be left with no choice as ironically, we see
less issues with VMQ disabled compared to it being enabled.
I hope this is enough information to go on and if you need any more, please do let me know. Any help here would be most appreciated.
I have gone over the configuration again and again and everything appears to have been configured correctly, however I am struggling with this one.
Many thanks
Matt

Hi Gleb
I can't seem to attach any images / links until my account has been verified.
There are a couple of entries in the ndisplatform/Operational log.
Event ID 7- Querying for OID 4194369794 on TeamNic {C67CA7BE-0B53-4C93-86C4-1716808B2C96} failed. OidBuffer is failed. Status = -1073676266
And
Event ID 6 - Forwarding of OID 66083 from TeamNic {C67CA7BE-0B53-4C93-86C4-1716808B2C96} due to Member NDISIMPLATFORM\Parameters\Adapters\{A5FDE445-483E-45BB-A3F9-D46DDB0D1749} failed. Status = -1073741670
And
Forwarding of OID 66083 from TeamNic {C67CA7BE-0B53-4C93-86C4-1716808B2C96} due to Member NDISIMPLATFORM\Parameters\Adapters\{207AA8D0-77B3-4129-9301-08D7DBF8540E} failed. Status = -1073741670
It would appear as though the two GUIDS in the second and third events correlate with two of the NICs in the VM Switch team (the affected team).
Under MSLBFO Provider/Operational, there are also quite a few of the following errors:
Event ID 8 - Failing NBL send on TeamNic 0xffffe00129b79010
How can I find out what tNIC correlates with "0xffffe00129b79010"
Without the use of the nice little table that I put together (that I can't upload), the NICs and Teams are configured as follows:
Production VM Switch Team (x4 Interfaces) - Intel i350 Quad Port NICs. As above, the team itself is balanced across physical cards (two ports from each card). External SCVMM Logical Switch is uplinked to this team. Serves
as the main VM Switch for all Production Virtual machines. Team Mode is Switch Independent / Dynamic (Sum of Queues). RSS is disabled on all of the physical NICs in this team as well as the Multiplex adapter itself. VMQ configuration is as follows:
Interface Name          -      BaseVMQProc          -        MaxProcs
-      VMQ / RSS
VM_SWITCH_ETH01                  10
     1                           VMQ
VM_SWITCH_ETH02                  12
1                           VMQ
VM_SWITCH_ETH03                  14
   1                           VMQ
VM_SWITCH_ETH04                16
    1                           VMQ
SMB Fabric (x2 Interfaces) - Intel i350 Quad Port on-board daughter card. As above, these two NICs are in separate, VLAN isolated subnets that provide SMB Multichannel transport for Live Migration traffic and CSV Redirect / Cluster
Heartbeat data. These NICs are not teamed. VMQ is disabled on both of these NICs. Here is the RSS configuration for these interfaces that we have implemented:
Interface Name         -      BaseVMQProc         -        MaxProcs
-      VMQ / RSS
SMB_FABRIC_ETH01                18                                   2
RSS
SMB_FABRIC_ETH02                18                                   2
RSS
ISCSI SAN (x4 Interfaces) - Intel i350 Quad Port NICs. Once again, no teaming is required here as these serve as our ISCSI SAN interfaces (MPIO enabled) to the hosts. These four interfaces are balanced across two physical cards as per
the VM Switch team above. No VMQ on these NICS, however RSS is enabled as follows:
Interface Name          -      BaseVMQProc        -         MaxProcs
   -        VMQ / RSS
ISCSI_SAN_ETH01                    2                                    2
RSS
ISCSI_SAN_ETH02                    6                                    2
RSS
ISCSI_SAN_ETH03                    2
2                            RSS
ISCSI_SAN_ETH04                   6
2                            RSS
Management Team (x2 Interfaces) - The second two interfaces of the Intel i350 Quad Port on-board daughter card. Serves as the Management uplink to the host. As there are some management workloads hosted in this
cluster, a VM Switch is connected to this team, hence a vNIC is exposed to the Host OS in order to manage the Parent Partition. Teaming mode is Switch Independent / Address Hash (Min Queues). As there is a VM Switch connected to this team, the NICs
are configured for VMQ, thus RSS has been disabled:
Interface Name        -         BaseVMQProc        -         MaxProcs
-      VMQ / RSS
MAN_SWITCH_ETH01                 22                                  1
VMQ
MAN_SWITCH_ETH02                 22                                  1                           VMQ
We are limited as to the number of physical cores that we can allocate to VMQ and RSS so where possible, we have tried balance NICs over all available cores where practical.
Hope this helps.
Any more info required, please ask.
Kind Regards
Matt

Hyper-V, NIC Teaming and 2 hosts getting in the way of each other

Hey TechNet,
After my initial build of 2 Hyper-V Core server which took me a bit of time without a domain, I started building 2 more for another site. After the initial two, setting up the new ones went very fast until I ran into a very funny issue. And I am willing
to bet it is just my luck but I am wondering if any other out there ended up with it.
So, I build these 2 new servers, create a NIC teaming on each host, add the management OS adapter, give it an IP and I can ping the world. So I went back to my station and tried to start working on these hosts but I kept getting DCed especially from one
of them. Reinstalled it and remade the NIC teaming config, just in case. Same issue
So I started pinging both of the servers and I remarked that when one was pinging, the other one tended to not answer ping anymore and vice versa. After testing the firewall and the switch and even trying to put the 2 machines on different switches, did
not help. So I thought, what the heck, let's just remove all the network config from both machine, reboot, and redo the network config. Since then no issue.
I only forgot to do one thing before removing the network configuration, I forgot to check if the MAC address on the Management OS adapters were the same. Even if it is a small chance, it can still happen (1 in 256^4 i'd say).
So to get to my question, am I that unlucky or might it have been something else ?
Enjoy your weekends

I raised this bug long ago (one year ago in fact) and it still happens today.
If you create a virtual switch, then add a management vNIC to it - there are times when you will get two hosts with the same MAC on the vNIC that was added for management.
I have seen this in my lab (and I can reproduce it at will).
Modify the entire Hyper-V MAC address pool. Or else you will have the same issue with VMs. This is the only workaround.
But yes, it is a very confusing issue.
Brian Ehlert
http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
Learn. Apply. Repeat.

PS Script to Automate NIC Teaming and Configure Static IP Address based off an Existing Physical NIC

# Retrieve IP Address and Default Gateway from static IP Assigned NIC and assign to variables.
$wmi = Get-WmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter "IPEnabled = True" |
Where-Object { $_.IPAddress -match '192\.' }
$IPAddress = $wmi.IpAddress[0]
$DefaultGateway = $wmi.DefaultIPGateway[0]
# Create Lbfo TEAM1, by binding “Ethernet” and “Ethernet 2” NICs.
New-NetLbfoTeam -Name TEAM1 -TeamMembers "Ethernet","Ethernet 2" -TeamingMode Lacp -LoadBalancingAlgorithm TransportPorts -Confirm:$false
# 20 second pause to allow TEAM1 to form and come online.
Start-Sleep -s 20
# Configure static IP Address, Subnet, Default Gateway, DNS Server IPs to newly formed TEAM1 interface.
New-NetIPAddress –InterfaceAlias “TEAM1” –IPAddress $IPAddress –PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway $DefaultGateway
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “TEAM1” -ServerAddresses xx.xx.xx.xx, xx.xx.xx.xx
Howdy All!
I was recently presented with the challenge of automating the creation and configuration of a NIC Team on Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2.
Condition:
New Team will use static IP Address of an existing NIC (one of two physical NICs to be used in the Team). Each server has more than one NIC.
Our environment is pretty static, in the sense that all our servers use the same subnet mask and DNS server IP Addresses, so I really only had
to worry about the Static IP Address and the Default Gateway.
1. Retrieve NIC IP Address and Default Gateway:
I needed a way to query only the NIC with the correct IP Address settings and create required variables based on that query. For that, I
leveraged WMI. For example purposes, let's say the servers in your environment start with 192. and you know the source physical NIC with desired network configurations follows this scheme. This will retrieve only the network configuration information
for the NIC that has the IP Address that starts with "192." Feel free to replace 192 with whatever octet you use. you can expand the criteria by filling out additional octects... example:
Where-Object
$_.IPAddress
-match'192\.168.' } This would search for NICs with IP Addresses 192.168.xx.xx.
$wmi
= Get-WmiObject
Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration
-Filter "IPEnabled = True"
|
Where-Object {
$_.IPAddress
-match '192\.' }
$IPAddress
= $wmi.IpAddress[0]
$DefaultGateway
= $wmi.DefaultIPGateway[0]
2. Create Lbfo TEAM1
This is a straight forward command based off of New-NetLbfoTeam. I used "-Confirm:$false" to suppress prompts.
Our NICs are named “Ethernet” and “Ethernet 2” by default, so I was able to keep –TeamMembers as a static entry.
Also added start-sleep command to give the new Team time to build and come online before moving on to network configurations.
New-NetLbfoTeam
-Name TEAM1
-TeamMembers "Ethernet","Ethernet 2"
-TeamingMode SwitchIndependent
-LoadBalancingAlgorithm
Dynamic -Confirm:$false
# 20 second pause to allow TEAM1 to form and come online.
Start-Sleep
-s 20
3. Configure network settings for interface "TEAM1".
Now it's time to pipe the previous physical NICs configurations to the newly built team. Here is where I will leverage
the variables I created earlier.
There are two separate commands used to fully configure network settings,
New-NetIPAddress : Here is where you assign the IP Address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway.
Set-DnsClientServerAddress: Here is where you assign any DNS Servers. In my case, I have 2, just replace x's with your
desired DNS IP Addresses.
New-NetIPAddress
–InterfaceAlias “TEAM1”
–IPAddress $IPAddress
–PrefixLength 24
-DefaultGateway $DefaultGateway
Set-DnsClientServerAddress
-InterfaceAlias “TEAM1”
-ServerAddresses xx.xx.xx.xx, xx.xx.xx.xx
Hope this helps and cheers!

I've done this before, and because of that I've run into something you may find valuable.
Namely two challenges:
There are "n" number of adapters in the server.
Adapters with multiple ports should be labeled in order.
MS only supports making a LBFO Team out of "like speed" adapters.
To solve both of these challenges I standardized the name based on link speed for each adapter before creating hte team. Pretty simple really! FIrst I created to variables to store the 10g and 1g adapters. I went ahead and told it to skip
any "hyper-V" ports for obvious reasons, and sorted by MAC address as servers tend to put all thier onboard NICs in sequentially by MAC:
$All10GAdapters = (Get-NetAdapter |where{$_.LinkSpeed -eq "10 Gbps" -and $_.InterfaceDesription -notmatch 'Hyper-V*'}|sort-object MacAddress)
$All1GAdapters = (Get-NetAdapter |where{$_.LinkSpeed -eq "1 Gbps" -and $_.InterfaceDesription -notmatch 'Hyper-V*'}|sort-object MacAddress)
Sweet ... now that I have my adapters I can rename them into something standardized:
$i=0
$All10GAdapters | ForEach-Object {
Rename-NetAdapter -Name $_.Name -NewName "Ethernet_10g_$i"
$i++
$i = 0
$All1GAdapters | ForEach-Object {
Rename-NetAdapter -Name $_.Name -NewName "Ethernet_1g_$i"
$i++
Once that's done Now i can return to your team command but use a wildcard sense I know the standardized name!
New-NetLbfoTeam -Name TEAM1G -TeamMembers Ethernet_1g_* -TeamingMode SwitchIndependent -LoadBalancingAlgorithm Dynamic -Confirm:$false
New-NetLbfoTeam -Name TEAM10G -TeamMembers Ethernet_10g_* -TeamingMode SwitchIndependent -LoadBalancingAlgorithm Dynamic -Confirm:$false

ESXi 4.1 NIC Teaming's Load-Balancing Algorithm,Nexus 7000 and UCS

Hi, Cisco Gurus:
Please help me in answering the following questions (UCSM 1.4(xx), 2 UCS 6140XP, 2 Nexus 7000, M81KR in B200-M2, No Nexus 1000V, using VMware Distributed Switch:
Q1. For me to configure vPC on a pair of Nexus 7000, do I have to connect Ethernet Uplink from each Cisco Fabric Interconnect to the 2 Nexus 7000 in a bow-tie fashion? If I connect, say 2 10G ports from Fabric Interconnect 1 to 1 Nexus 7000 and similar connection from FInterconnect 2 to the other Nexus 7000, in this case can I still configure vPC or is it a validated design? If it is, what is the pro and con versus having 2 connections from each FInterconnect to 2 separate Nexus 7000?
Q2. If vPC is to be configured in Nexus 7000, is it COMPULSORY to configure Port Channel for the 2 Fabric Interconnects using UCSM? I believe it is not. But what is the pro and con of HAVING NO Port Channel within UCS versus HAVING Port Channel when vPC is concerned?
Q3. if vPC is to be configured in Nexus 7000, I understand there is a limitation on confining to ONLY 1 vSphere NIC Teaming's Load-Balancing Algorithm i.e. Route Based on IP Hash. Is it correct?
Again, what is the pro and con here with regard to application behaviours when Layer 2 or 3 is concerned? Or what is the BEST PRACTICES?
I would really appreciate if someone can help me clear these lingering doubts of mine.
God Bless.
SiM

Sim,
Here are my thoughts without a 1000v in place,
Q1. For me to configure vPC on a pair of Nexus 7000, do I have to connect Ethernet Uplink from each Cisco Fabric Interconnect to the 2 Nexus 7000 in a bow-tie fashion? If I connect, say 2 10G ports from Fabric Interconnect 1 to 1 Nexus 7000 and similar connection from FInterconnect 2 to the other Nexus 7000, in this case can I still configure vPC or is it a validated design? If it is, what is the pro and con versus having 2 connections from each FInterconnect to 2 separate Nexus 7000? //Yes, for vPC to UCS the best practice is to bowtie uplink to (2) 7K or 5Ks.
Q2. If vPC is to be configured in Nexus 7000, is it COMPULSORY to configure Port Channel for the 2 Fabric Interconnects using UCSM? I believe it is not. But what is the pro and con of HAVING NO Port Channel within UCS versus HAVING Port Channel when vPC is concerned? //The port channel will be configured on both the UCSM and the 7K. The pro of a port channel would be both bandwidth and redundancy. vPC would be prefered.
Q3. if vPC is to be configured in Nexus 7000, I understand there is a limitation on confining to ONLY 1 vSphere NIC Teaming's Load-Balancing Algorithm i.e. Route Based on IP Hash. Is it correct? //Without the 1000v, I always tend to leave to dvSwitch load balence behavior at the default of "route by portID".
Again, what is the pro and con here with regard to application behaviours when Layer 2 or 3 is concerned? Or what is the BEST PRACTICES? UCS can perform L2 but Northbound should be performing L3.
Cheers,
David Jarzynka

Load Balancing and NIC Teaming

Hi! i have been looking through lots of links and none of them actually can fully answer my queries.
I am to do a writeup on load balancing and NIC Teaming, is there any1 that knows what are the commonly used load balancing and NIC Teaming methods, when to use each method, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method and the configuration for each
method!
Sorry its lots of questions but i have to do a detailed writeup!
Many thanks in advance :D

HI
NIC Teaming - On a single server, you will have mutiple NIC. You can Team the NIC so that both NIC will act togather to provide better bandwidth and High avaliblity.
Example : NIC 1 - 1 GB and NIC -2 1 GB so in Team it can act a 2 GB single NIC, If one fails speed will be reduced but it will have HA
Loadbalancing : Two servers hosting same content:
Example : Microsoft.com can be hosted in two or even more servers and a loadbalancer will be used to split load to each server based of the current load and traffic.
No disadvantages

NIC teaming - Server 2008 R2 DC combined with other Software

Hello!
I've been searching all morning for an answer of what we have in mind to do at work....
We've got a server installed with Windows Server 2008 R2 and have 4 NICs on it. We want to make it a DC (with DNS, DHCP and print services) and also want to install our Backup Solution (from Veeam) for our VMs. This server will be the only physical Microsoft
server next to our 3 ESX servers at the end.
I read here (http://markparris.co.uk/2010/02/09/top-tipactive-directory-domain-controllers-and-teamed-network-cards/) that there is a statement that a DC with NIC teaming is only using the FO (Fail-Over) feature of the teaming. Since there is also the backup
solution on this server, it would be great also to use the LB (Load-Balancing) feature. My question is, when I active NIC teaming and install the DC roles, does the roles just use the FO feature and neglect the LB feature or does it enable/disable those modes/features
of NIC teaming? Cause it would be nice if the backup solution could use the LB for bigger bandwidth for backup and restores and I wouldn't really care about the FO for the DC role.
cheers
Ivo

Hi,
I think the issue is related to the third party NIC teaming solution. You can refer to the third party manufacture.
Here I should remind you something else, a DC with multiple NICs will cause many problems. So I would recommend you run a dedicated
Hyper-v server and promote a DC on one of the virtual machine.
Hope this helps.

NIC Teaming on Dell Servers

I am using BASP to setup NIC teaming on a Dell R720 server. My understanding is that both of the following teaming methods supports load balancing/sharing. ie: team with 2 NIC cards (1gbps each) I will get 2gbps throughput. Am I right?
• Smart Load Balancing and Failover
• Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
If I were to setup LACP, is it mandatory to define native vlan? Is the following command holds good?
interface Port-channel100
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
interface GigabitEthernet 0/1
description Uplink to Server (NIC-1)
switchport access vlan 100
switchport mode access
channel-group 100 mode active
spanning-tree portfast
interface GigabitEthernet 0/2
description Uplink to Server (NIC-2)
switchport access vlan 100
switchport mode access
channel-group 100 mode active
spanning-tree portfast

That's what I indicated in my original answer: The access VLAN and switchport modes should be defined on the Port-channel100 interface as well as the member interfaces if you want the bundle to actually be on VLAN 100.
Defining "spanning-tree portfast" ("spanning-tree portfast trunk" for 802.1q) on the Po100 interface should be done for servers. Once you set it on the Po100 interface, it should reconfigure the member interfaces automatically.

Nic Team network speed

Hello!
There're two physical servers (Hyper-V is not installed) with two nic teams, each consisting of two 1Gb nics:
To test these teams I tried to copy two files from server1 to server2:
1) I started copying the first file and ~20 sec later started copying the second file to the same SSD (from server1 to server2)
2) I copied ~simultaneously two different files to the two different SSDs (from server1 to server2)
As shown in the picture 1 when I added the second copying the first one had stopped completely, although this SSD can tolerate transfer rate up to 350-380MBps.
Both pictures show that the total file transfer speed was less than that of a single team member (1Gbps):
0+112MBps < 1Gbps
57.1 MBps + 56.5MBps < 1Gbps
According to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831648.aspx
NIC Teaming, also known as load balancing and failover (LBFO), allows multiple network adapters on a computer to be placed into a team for the following purposes:
Bandwidth aggregation
Traffic failover to prevent connectivity loss in the event of a network component failure
Test1 and Test2 show no bandwith aggregation... Are my tests wrong?
Thank you in advance,
Michael

P.S. In a production network it means users would read data from servers using the total amount of a team's bandwidth but write data using the bandwidth of a single team member - that's not I would ever like to have in my network.
And once again: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831648.aspx
Traffic distribution algorithms
NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 supports the following traffic distribution methods:
Hashing. This algorithm creates a hash based on components of the packet, and then it assigns packets that have that hash value to one of the available network adapters. This keeps all packets from the same TCP stream on the
same network adapter. Hashing alone usually creates balance across the available network adapters. Some NIC Teaming solutions that are available on the market monitor the distribution of the traffic and reassign specific hash values to different
network adapters in an attempt to better balance the traffic. The dynamic redistribution is known as smart load balancing or adaptive load balancing.
The components that can be used as inputs to the hashing function include:
Source and destination MAC addresses
Source and destination IP addresses, with or without considering the MAC addresses (2-tuple hash)
Source and destination TCP ports, usually used along with the IP addresses (4-tuple hash)
I don't see in this explanation any reason for not creating balance when the sourses are different but the destination is the same...
Regards,
Michael

Relationship between coherence and NIC teaming

Hi,
We are using Tangosol coherence for clustering purpose in our product Webmethods Integration server.
When our server starts up it tries to jojn tne cluster.
Our scenario is this :-
We have 2 servers running on 2 separate boxes A&B.
They are on same network segment.
Multicast test is working properly .
The issue is only one of the nodes(which is started first) in becoming the part of the cluster and other one remain disabled.
We found out that the NIC teaming was disabled in the boxes.
When we enabled NIC teaming with smart load balancing then both the nodes are able to join the cluster.
My specific question is,
Is there any relationship between Tangosol coherence and NIC teaming? If yes, what's the relationship.
Regards,
Ritwik Bhattacharyya

I did some tinkering a while back trying to get 4Gb/s bonded etherchannels going on linux boxes but I had issues with out of order and missing packets:
4Gb/s bonded ethernet test results - finally...
But to answer your question there is no reason that you would need NIC teaming on in order to make Coherence work. It sounds like something is not configured correctly with your NIC or switch. Maybe try connecting the machines with a crossover cable instead of a switch just to eliminate the switch as a possible problem. It sounds like maybe you're just using the wrong ethernet port on a server or something.
-Andrew

Are these viable designs for NIC teaming on UCS C-Series?

Is this a viable design on ESXi 5.1 on UCS C240 with 2 Quad port nic adapters?
Option A) VMware NIC Teaming with load balancing of vmnic interfaces in an Active/Active configuration through alternate and redundant hardware paths to the network.
Option B) VMware NIC Teaming with load balancing of vmnic interfaces in an Active/Standy By configuration through alternate and redundant hardware paths to the network.
Option A:
Option B:
Thanks.

No. It really comes down to what Active/Active means and the type of upstream switches. For ESXi NIC teaming - Active/Active load balancing provided the opportunity to have all network links be active for different guest devices. Teaming can be configured in a few different methods. The default is by virtual port ID where each guest machine gets assigned to an active port and then also a backup port. Traffic for that host would only be sent on one link at a time.
For example lets assume 2 Ethernet Links and 4 guests on the ESX host. Link 1 to Switch 1 would be active for Guest 1 and 2 and Link 2 to Switch 2 would be backup for Guest 1 and 2. However Link 2 to Switch 2 would be active for Guest 3 and 4 and Link 1 to Switch 1 would be backup for guest 1 and 2.
The following provides details on the configuration of NIC teaming with VMWare:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004088
There are also possibilities of configuring LACP in some situations, but there are special hardware considerations on the switch side as well as the host side.
Also keep in mind that the vSwitch does not indiscriminately forward broadcast/multicast/unknown unicast out all ports. It has a strict set of rules that prevents it from looping. It is not a traditional L2 forwarder so loops are not a consideration in an active/active environment.
This document further explains VMWare Virtual Networking Concepts.
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf
Steve McQuerry
UCS - Technical Marketing

Windows Server 2012/2012R2 NIC Teaming Mode

Hi,
Question 1:
In Windows Server 2012 the following teaming mode was recommended for Hyper-V NIC teams:
Teaming mode: Switch Independent
Load balancing mode: Hyper-V Port
All Adapers Active
In a session at TechEd 2014 it was stated that Dynamic is the new recommendation for Windows Server 2012 R2. However, a Microsoft PFE stated a few weeks ago that he would still recommend Hyper-V Port for Windows Server 2012 R2. What is your opinions around
this?
Question 2:
We have a Hyper-V Failover Cluster which isn`t migrated to 2012 R2 yet, it`s running 2012. In this cluster we use Switch Independent/Hyper-V Port for the team. We also use converged networking, having 2 physical adapters bound to the NIC team, as well as
3 virtual adapters in the management OS for management, CSV and Live Migration. Recently one of the team NICs failed, and this incident also caused the cluster membership on the affected node to go offline even though the other team NIC was
connected. Is this expected behaviour? Would the behaviour be different if 2012 R2 with Dynamic mode was being used?

Hello,
As for question number 1:
For Hyper-V workload it's recommended to use Dynamic with
Switch Independent mode. Why?
This configuration will distribute the load based on the TCP Ports address hash as modified by the Dynamic load balancing algorithm. The Dynamic load balancing algorithm will redistribute flows to optimize team member bandwidth utilization so individual
flow transmissions may move from one active team member to another. The algorithm takes into account the small possibility that redistributing traffic could cause out-of-order delivery of packets so it takes steps to minimize that possibility.
The receive side, however, will look identical to Hyper-V Port distribution. Each Hyper-V switch port’s traffic, whether bound for a virtual NIC in a VM (vmNIC) or a virtual NIC in the host (vNIC), will see all its inbound traffic arriving on a single
NIC.
This mode is best used for teaming in both native and Hyper-V environments except when:
1) Teaming is being performed in a VM,
2) Switch dependent teaming (e.g., LACP) is required by policy, or
3) Operation of a two-member Active/Standby team is required by policy.
As for question number 2:
The Switch Independent/Hyper-V Port will send packets using all active team members distributing the load based on the Hyper-V switch port number. Each Hyper-V port will be bandwidth limited to not more than one team member’s bandwidth because the port
is affinitized to exactly one team member at any point in time.
In all cases where this configuration was recommended back in Windows Server 2012 the new configuration in 2012 R2, Switch Independent/Dynamic, will provide better performance.
Microsoft recommend for a clustered Hyper-V deployment
in Windows server 2012 to use Switch Independent/Hyper-V Port as you mentioned and to configure
Hyper-V QoS that applies to the virtual switch. (Configure minimum bandwidth in
weight mode instead of in bits per second and Enable and configure QoS
for all virtual network adapters
Did you apply QoS on the Converged vSwitch after you
created the team?? However Nodes are considered down if they do not respond to 5 heartbeats. The Switch Independent/Hyper-V Port does not cause the cluster to goes down if one NIC failed. The issue is somewhere else and not in the teaming mode
that you choose.
Hope this help.
Regards,
Charbel Nemnom
MCSA, MCSE, MCS, MCITP
Blog: www.charbelnemnom.com
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if
a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

NIC teaming in OVM

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for