Nexus 9396 VPC with VMware ESXi 5.5 Standard Switch

[Jason Sinclair]

We just upgraded our core switch to a Nexus 9396, which is connected to dual UCS 6248 FI's and also individually to some Dell R710's with a dual 10Gb Ethernet card. When connecting these standalone servers with an etherchannel VPC, the management IP address goes up and down and some hosts can talk while others can't. If I leave one port disabled, it works fine. However, as soon as both are enabled, connectivity goes down. These ESXi servers are on a standard license, so distributed switches are out of the question. I did enable an eval license and setup a vDS using the enhanced LACP and that works great, it just won't work as a standard etherchannel with a standard virtual switch. The connectivity to the 6248's is also working without any issues running in LACP. Below is the configuration:

Nexus SW01:

interface Ethernet1/5
  description ESX vPC Member
  switchport mode trunk
  channel-group 202
  no shutdown

interface port-channel202
  description ESX
  switchport mode trunk
  vpc 202

Nexus SW02:

interface Ethernet1/5
  description ESX vPC Member
  switchport mode trunk
  channel-group 202
  no shutdown

interface port-channel202
  description ESX
  switchport mode trunk
  vpc 202

ESXi configuration is a standard switch with "Route based on IP hash" and both adapters active. Am I missing something? Is this setup not supported? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[osahx1500]

Have seen the same issue within our environment noticed constant vlan flapping without port-channel but with port-channel ESXi complaint bitterly. I'm still searching for proper solution(s) to address this problem. By the way, running standard not distributed switch.

[caoweilin5]

You should not bundle vmnics on the ESXi standard vswitch as long as you do not config the connected Eth in a vPC on Nexus peer switch.  

[bauti1428]

FYI:

“Route base on IP hash” If the switch side is set to port channeled (VPC) If it is just multiple connection with no port channel use “originating virtual port ID”.

Please read the articles below when you get a chance.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2006129

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1004048?r=2&Quarterback.validateRoute=1&KM_Utility.getArticleData=1&KM_Utility.getGUser=1&KM_Utility.getArticleLanguage=2&KM_Utility.getArticle=1

[Cormac Champion]

Hi there,

What Load-Balancing method did you set for this on the Distributed Switch to allow for a VPC to be configured ?