NIC Teaming on Dell Servers

[avilt]

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

[ghostinthenet · Accepted solution]

The LACP portion of the configuration looks fine, but 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.

[avilt]

I just realized that this  configuration is not correct. The command "switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q"

on "interface Port-channel100" is wrong since I am using server nic's. So it should be access ports.

Also is there any issue defining them as spanning-tree port-fast as they are bundled together?

[ghostinthenet · Accepted solution]

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.