Best practice ESXi and stacked redundant switches

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dwright1542

Active Member
Dec 26, 2015
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Just added some 40G stacked Brocades to the lab here. What is best practice for redundant NIC's going to the same switch? vsphere 6.7

1. I have RSTP turned on
2. I had 2 10G NIC's Active / Active
3. I did NOT have the ports set to edge ports (DUH)
4. Had load balancing set to route based on VPID

So yeah, the brocades STP flipped out, saw flapping, and then ESXI saw an unstable connectetion and actually shut the nic down. So I:

1. Made those ports edge ports, which was just stupid to miss.
2. Set the NIC's to active / standby
3. reenabled the NIC's on the ESXi machines

Can I go back to active active with VPID?
 

Kal G

Active Member
Oct 29, 2014
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Can I go back to active active with VPID?
Yes, but I recommend switching to "route based on IP hash" first. This is required if you're switch ports are set up for ether-channel.

If you're switch ports are not configured for ether-channel, you'll still get better traffic distribution with IP hash routing. With VPID, it chooses a NIC to use for each VM, and doesn't change it. With IP hash, it chooses the NIC for each flow based and the source and destination IPs.

Additional information:
VMware Knowledge Base