ESXi Management not working with SG500 LAG

[stephenjh]

I am setting up a 3 host ESXi cluster. I am using a pair of stacked SG500-28 switches for switching redundancy. Each host has 8 NICs. 4 to each switch. I have successfully setup a 3 NIC LAG with 1 path to one switch and 2 paths to the other. These LAGs work. When I setup a 2NIC LAG via the console for management, and the associated ports on the switches, I lose managment communication with the host. Before setting up the LAG in the ESXi console, I set that vswitch properties to us IPHASH as instructed here bit.ly/VLaTEt I have attempted to follow those instructions as closely as possible. The one thing that I am wondering is whether the SG series supports etherchannel. I can't find any reference. Either way, it works on the other vswitch that is for vMotion. I can vmkping between the hosts over that LAG. But setting up a LAG on the management vSwitch doesn't?

Thanks,

Stephen

[Tom Watts]

A lag is an ether-channel, port-channel, channel-group, many of names.

If your ESXi supports static LAG, should try to use that instead of lacp.

Also you may want to check your load balance on the ESXi. The switch doesn't support XOR.

Only 2 options here

The switch supports two modes of load balancing:

• By MAC Addresses—Based on the destination and source MAC addresses

of all packets.

• By IP and MAC Addresses—Based on the destination and source IP

addresses for IP packets, and destination and source MAC addresses for

non-IP packets.

-Tom
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[stephenjh]

Tom,

Thank you for the quick response.

ESXi doesn't support LACP so I did not enabled it on the switches.

The vSwitch is setup to use IPHASH as specified by VMWare as the only valid option for Etherchannel.

I don't see any control over the Load Balancing mechanism in the GUI. Is that a CLI only control?

Thanks,

Stephen

[Tom Watts]

Port Management > Link Aggregation > LAG Management.

MAC Address—Perform load balancing by source and destination MAC

addresses on all packets.

• IP/MAC Address—Perform load balancing by the source and destination IP

addresses on IP packets,

Here's a good document

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1001938

Enabling either Route based on IP hash without 802.3ad  aggregation or vice-versa disrupts networking, so you must make the  changes to the virtual switch first. That way, the service console is  not available, but the physical switch management interface is, so you  can enable aggregation on the ports involved to restore networking.

-Tom
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[stephenjh]

Tom,

There it is.

I guess the other question I have is do the SG500s support LAG across the stack. It obviously allows you to do it so I can't see that it wouldn't.

Enabling LAG via vCenter I haven't tried. I have been doing it via the console on the ESXi host to ensure that I am not doing anything that I can't undo later.

Stephen

[Tom Watts]

Across the stack meaning lets say

gi1/1/1

gi2/1/1

Those ports can be a lag.

-Tom
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