dkblee@hotmail.com
hi! i'm trying to configure teaming for my hp server. the servers have 2 1gbps nic cards. i tried to configured the port channel on the sw connected to this server....i noticed that the max bandwidth i can load into the link is about 60% of the 2gbps link. Is there any thing i can do to maximize the 2gbps bandwidth to at least 80%?
another question is that, if i'm connecting 2 switches together with trunk port channel of 2 physical links, how do i do load balancing in this case. i think my current setup only utilized 1 link and the other link is in standby for failover. How do i utilize both link together to reach at least 20% of 2gbps rather than just 1gbps? pls advise. thx
Thanks.
This question of load-balancing across etherchannel links comes up quite a bit. It's important to understand that different switches support different types of load-balancing ie. src/dst mac-address, src/dst IP address, src/dst port numbers. Not all switches support all methods so you need to choose a method that
1) is supported on your switch
2) will spread the load across all the links eg. if you have one server talking to it's default-gateway for 90% of the time the src/dst mac-address load-balancing wouldn't really help because 90% of the traffic would be sent down the same physical link. In this case src/dst IP address would be better if the switch supported it.
Have a read of this doc which gives a lot of detail on how etherchannel load-balances across it's links and which switches support which types -
Etherchannel load balancing
Jon
