Direct connect LACP?

G

Guldan

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 16, 2013
Messages
113
Hey guys, is this possible?

I have two Dell 1950s, both have 4 gigabit ports (2 onboard 2 w/ broadcom card)

One box is Freenas and one is ESXI, I've setup ISCSI on Freenas and it works great however i'd love to add some more bandwidth. What I don't have is a managed switch supporting LACP.

Can I connect 2 ports on each server directly with ethernet cable and setup LACP? perhaps just for ISCSI traffic? or maybe someone has a better idea.

Freenas box is sharing CIFS for media storage and ISCSI to my ESXI box

Thanks
 
Yes if the cards support it. The protocol will do all the negotiation and communicate the LACP messages just fine as long as both ends support the protocol. Make sure to use crossover cabling.

However you will not double your bandwidth using 802.3ad. You will only benefit from the failover feature and nothing more. LACP is not for host to host bandwidth increase. It is for server to (many simultaneous) hosts at the same time hence where a switch that support LinkAg will let the protocol shine i.e. 10 PC's are accessing your NAS which has 4 1gb connections in a LinkAg group therefore providing a theroetical 8gbps full duplex to the network. If you want to have more bandwidth (speed) you need to use some Inifinband or 10g/e or 10g fiber between the two servers.
 
If you want this for ISCSI you are better off with leaving them as just multiple connections (not teamed) and using mpio
 
Ok perhaps a better question for people with more network chops then me is how do I best utilize these extra nics?

I have two servers

Dell 1950 - Freenas - Media Server / ISCSI Target / CIFS Sharing
Dell 1950 - ESXi - Runs off Freenas ISCSI Target

This is literally just for me, so it's not serving any clients and everything will be low I/O. I'm just looking to learn and create a nice testbed.

I don't really need failover as nothing is critical, hense me looking to increase my bandwidth. There is no way to aggregate a few ports and make it 2 gigabit?

I've used MPIO on windows boxes but not through Freenas/ZFS so im not sure if its possible

thanks
 
MPIO dood. iSCSI and LACP is asking for trouble.
If you were using NFS thats a different story then again you need a distributed switch license in vsphere.

MPIO and Round Robin will get you the most benefit.
 
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