Load balancing mode on etherchannel

[That guy from cloud team]

Hello,

We have Cisco 2960X with two etherchannels (2 ports each). One is static (mode on) to ESXi host and other active to another switch. On ESXi host load balancing policy is set to src-dst-ip (called IP hash) and it works as I see traffic on both ports in static port-channel (in Cacti). But I just discovered that switch load-balance is set to src-mac (default setting).

1. Can someone tell me why load-balancing works although its mode is mismatched?

2. If I'll change load-balance on 2960 to src-dst-ip will I lose management access to another switch connected on active etherchannel? Second switch also has src-mac load-balance policy.

This is production environment so I can't experiment with settings.

[marce1000]

 - It will not have impact as long as the channel is correctly configured , which it is at your case (devices then only care about the traffic not how it is 'algorythmized') :

   You will find similar opinion(s) here :

               https://community.cisco.com/t5/switching/etherchannel-load-balance/td-p/2085547

 M.

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

"Can someone tell me why load-balancing works although its mode is mismatched?"

Switch's hashing mode is for egress only.  It doesn't care what the other side is using for its mode, if any.  (BTW, back in ye olden days, when you might only have options like src-mac or dest-mac, often the ideal setup was different modes for the two ends.  Consider router on one side and multiple hosts on the other.)

"If I'll change load-balance on 2960 to src-dst-ip will I lose management access to another switch connected on active etherchannel?"

Usually not.  You might disrupt a few in-flight frames, but the "hit" is usually so brief it goes unnoticed.

That said, ideally any configuration changes should be done during a change window or, at the least, during non-peak or critical times.