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Layering vif's where lacp member vif's are of unequal size

patrick
2,067 Views

Hi, I have a dual-controller 3140a in a QA environment with only 2 on-board GigE ports each.  The current config has:

Single vif per controller

- e0a active

- e0b standby

- each nic port is attached to a separate Cisco 6509-E switch.  There is a 4-gig port channel between the switches but they do not have the cross-stacking VSS module.

On each side I am going to add a 4-port GigE PCIe card and then implement:

- 2 lacp vif's - one connected to each 6509 switch - vif_lacp0, vif_lacp1

- 1 single-mode vif layered above the 2 lacp vif's.

So the config on Controller1 would look like:

vif create lacp -b ip vif_lacp0 <nics>

vif create lacp -b ip vif_lacp1 <nics>

vif create single vif_single0 vif_lacp0 vif_lacp1

vif favor vif_lacp0

* matching config with appropriate naming changes will be put on Controller2

- Controller 1 is the primary controller for Oracle DB connections (2 2-node RAC clusters)

- Controller 2 is the primary controller for a VMware vSphere cluster (8 hosts)

What I'm trying to determine and decide is whether the <nics>  belonging to the lacp vif's have to be equal in number?  If not I was considering making:

vif_lacp0 (active) use all 4-ports from the add-in card

vif_lacp1 (standby) use the 2-ports from the on-board card

Pros:

- additional bandwidth with higher single link-loss failure on active vif's, which should be up and active almost 100% of the time

- avoid any issues if differences in chipsets b/w onboard nics and expansion card nics

Cons:

- Lower bandwidth available during outages, although it would take full loss of primary 6500 to be in that situation

Anyone tried this before with good or bad results?

Thanks,

PS

1 REPLY 1

scottgelb
2,067 Views

Yes this does work and is supported.  Another example we have implemented in a similar manner is a single 10GbE NIC as primary then a 4x 1GbE LACP secondary.  Then the single mode vif contains the single interface and the second level vif.

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