VSM to VEM communication on control vlan

[patelvc7601]

I am looking for the information regarding the VSM to VEM communication. I understand the VEM knows about the VSM through Opaque data pushed by vcenter but afterwords how VEM communicates with VSM or vice versa. is this l2 broadcast or l2 multicast or l2 unicast ? or combination .

we are using the nexus 1000 in vPC HM with mac-pinning which allows me to see vm to physical nic pinning but for the VEM control(DPA) mac-address how do I know which nic it should pinned to . Any insight into this communication will help.

Sincerely,

Viral

[Robert Burns]

Viral,

When the 1000v is in L2 mode, the VSM <-> VEM communication uses broadcast.  When in L3 mode, it uses unicast.

When using VPC-HM you can see which VEM uplink LTL your control traffic is pinned to with:

vemcmd show port-old

or

module vem x execute vemcmd show port-old

Note: The updated "vemcmd show port" ouput only shows VM interfaces and omits the control/packet interfaces.

LTL 10 - is your Control interface

LTL 12 - is your Packet interface

LTL 49+ - will be your Virtual Machine Interfaces

If you look under the SG_ID column you'll see the sub group ID of each VMNIC.  From my example below I can see that my Control LTL 10 has a Pinned_SGID of 1.  Going lower I see that LTL 18 is my vmnic1 which is member interface for SGID 1

~ # vemcmd show port-old

  LTL    IfIndex   Vlan    Bndl  SG_ID Pinned_SGID  Type  Admin State  CBL Mode   Name

    6          0      1 T     0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1  Trunk vns

    8          0   3969       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

    9          0   3969       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   10          0   3001       0     32           1  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   11          0   3968       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   12          0   3002       0     32           0  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   13          0      1       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    0 Access

   14          0   3971       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   15          0   3971       0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access

   16          0      1 T     0     32          32  VIRT     UP    UP    1  Trunk arp

   17   2500c000      1 T   305      0          32  PHYS     UP    UP    1  Trunk vmnic0

   18   2500c040      1 T   305      1          32  PHYS     UP    UP    1  Trunk vmnic1

   49   1c000180   3002       0     32           0  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access n1000v-BL1-Secondary.eth2

   50   1c000170     19       0     32           1  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access n1000v-BL1-Secondary.eth1

   51   1c000120   3001       0     32           0  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access n1000v-BL1-Secondary.eth0

   52   1c000060     19       0     32           1  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access SV Team Sharepoint.eth0

   53   1c000030     19       0     32           0  VIRT     UP    UP    1 Access vmk3

  305   16000000      1 T     0     32          32  CHAN     UP    UP    1  Trunk

Regards,

Robert

[patelvc7601]

Many thanks Robert . I don't have enough words.

Sincerely

Viral