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Network adapter teaming

arpportoPereira
Level 1
Level 1

Hi,

I have several servers with setup teaming, and with this setup I get several messages in syslog server "Received ARP request collision ..."

Can I solve this problem in the switch side?

 

thanks

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

IAN WHITMORE
Level 4
Level 4

Where are the messages coming from exactly? A switch? A firewall? Anyway you should see that each message comes with a different MAC address (presumably one from each server NIC card) as the VIP (virtual IP) is seen as been connected to two MACs and hence two switch ports.

Now when you configure teaming you should create a VIP and a virtual MAC which should avoid these coliisons so chech the NIC teaming configuration. Also if both server links are connected to the same switch, you might want to configure an etherchannel between the switch and the server to take advantage of the full bandwidth available in an active-active design. An alternative would be to have one NIC connected to one switch, the other NIc connected to another switch and to use Active-Failover configuration, thus avoiding the problem of collisions.

Each company, be it Dell, Microsoft or Intel have their own way to configure NIC teaming on their servers and none of them appear to have taken networking (switches, firewalls etc) into account with their lovely ARP broadcasts and virtual IPs. I don't think they stopped to think about Layer 2 and 3.

Anyway, it sounds like a configuration issue on the servers (the server guys will never tell you that though), but it sounds like you need to sort out how you want the NIC teaming to work and the best way to implement it.

HTH,

Ian

View solution in original post

3 Replies 3

IAN WHITMORE
Level 4
Level 4

Where are the messages coming from exactly? A switch? A firewall? Anyway you should see that each message comes with a different MAC address (presumably one from each server NIC card) as the VIP (virtual IP) is seen as been connected to two MACs and hence two switch ports.

Now when you configure teaming you should create a VIP and a virtual MAC which should avoid these coliisons so chech the NIC teaming configuration. Also if both server links are connected to the same switch, you might want to configure an etherchannel between the switch and the server to take advantage of the full bandwidth available in an active-active design. An alternative would be to have one NIC connected to one switch, the other NIc connected to another switch and to use Active-Failover configuration, thus avoiding the problem of collisions.

Each company, be it Dell, Microsoft or Intel have their own way to configure NIC teaming on their servers and none of them appear to have taken networking (switches, firewalls etc) into account with their lovely ARP broadcasts and virtual IPs. I don't think they stopped to think about Layer 2 and 3.

Anyway, it sounds like a configuration issue on the servers (the server guys will never tell you that though), but it sounds like you need to sort out how you want the NIC teaming to work and the best way to implement it.

HTH,

Ian

Hi IAN thanks for answering.

The messages are from a FWSM module, and the NIC's are connected to diferent switchs, the etherchannel is not an option The FWSM is making routing.

I'm going to ask to the server guys to configur an virtual MAC.

With NLB from Microsoft everything works fine, I only have problems with this NIc teaming from HP servers.

best regards

Hope it works out for you.

Regards,
Ian