LACP VIF vs 2 Single NIC's

[fabian213]

Ok, so we're lookign at only performance, not redundancy. Which has better performance, an LACP VIF comprised of two 1Gb NIC's, or two seperate 1Gb NIC's? The ports are on the same switch, so redundancy on the switch side isn't a factor we're concerned with.

My instinct is to say LACP, but I don't have any technical data to back that up. I know LACP has an overhead for it's algorithm, would that make it slower (however slightly) than 2 single NIC's? So, 2Gb LACP VIF or 2x1Gb NIC's?

Cheers.

[ekashpureff]

Fabian -

I'd put my money on the two single interfaces over the VIFs, but I'm not a betting man. I prefer hard data.

To me the overwhelming issue here would be manageability and failover.

Do you realy want to configure alternate hosts to use different IPs ?

I'd go with active-active VIFs (ifgrps) any day over the single interface configuration.

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene Kashpureff

NetAppU Instructor and Independent Consultant

(P.S. I appreciate points for helpful or correct answers.)