ACI vPC/Port-channel with IBM Power 7 Servers

[tuanquangnguyen]

Hi community,

Kinda frustrated with this case where vPC (and even Direct Port-channel) fails to come up with IBM Power 7 on the other end. E.g.

- LACP vPC (or Port-channel) on ACI with all ports on IBM Power being configured as active adapters, mode 802.3ad

- Static EtherChannel on ACI with all ports on IBM configured as mode Standard

It seems that it's not consistent for all cases. The IBM server team has 6 LPARs, which we agreed to configure LACP bonding (vPC on ACI side) for all of them. Though, eventually we had to re-configure them as either:

- Static EtherChannel for 3 LPARs, with vPC on ACI side

- LACP for 2 LPARs, but with 2 ports connected as Direct Port-channel on ACI side. This LPAR also has a standby adapter which is connected to another leaf in the same vPC context/domain for hot standby purpose.

- Active/Standby 2-port bond for 1 LPAR, with each connected to a different leaf.

Has anyone ever struggled with the same situation before?

Thanks.

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Hello @tuanquangnguyen 

Have you tried changing the LACP graceful convergence settings? This can play a trick sometimes.

Regards,

Sergiu

[tuanquangnguyen]

Hi Sergiu,

It doesn't seem to work in this case, though.

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Can you give more details on what do you mean it does not work, not even in static mode? Does the interface not coming up? or is the traffic forwarding affected?

Regards,

Sergiu

[skaraim]

Ensure you and server team understand what is configured on both sides and all your PC parameters match. Check also these commands to get overview of PC operational state:

show port-channel summary
show lacp int eth X/X
show lacp counters interface port-channel X
show lacp internal info interface ethernet X/X
show lacp internal event-history interface ethernet X/X

Server team should check the same on their side.