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Link Aggragation on Different Switches

M

MorfiusX

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 13, 2004
Messages
3,007
Let's start with a drawing:
drawing1uq2.jpg


What I need to do is aggregate the two blue connections coming from the server at the top. The issue is that the two links need to be aggregated to separate switches. I can not connect these to the same switch because these are part of an IBM BladeCenter. The model of the two switches connected to the server is OS-CIGESM-18TT-EBU, and the core switch is a 6509. Is there any way to configure this?
 
I dont think so, unless you have a load balancer. Can you make the NICs two different IP's, and then do DNS load balancing? It's better than nothing.
 
Boscoh said:
I dont think so, unless you have a load balancer. Can you make the NICs two different IP's, and then do DNS load balancing? It's better than nothing.
Click to expand...

I can't really do that because it's a VMware ESX server and I am trying aggregate outbound traffic from the machine, but in a fault tolerant fashion.
 
Do you have any more ports (or can you add more) on the server? If you have that ability you could do a dual link aggregation up to the "OS-CIGESM-18TT-EBU" and then back down to the 6500. I dont have much experiance with the IBM blade servers, but I'm suspecting that more than 2 uplinks is probably going to be tough.

EDIT: Well actualy it looks like you can have more Ethernet ports on some models.. "Two Gigabit Ethernet controllers standard, with load balancing and failover features, up to eight Ethernet ports per blade optional"
 
moetop said:
Do you have any more ports (or can you add more) on the server? If you have that ability you could do a dual link aggregation up to the "OS-CIGESM-18TT-EBU" and then back down to the 6500. I dont have much experiance with the IBM blade servers, but I'm suspecting that more than 2 uplinks is probably going to be tough.

EDIT: Well actualy it looks like you can have more Ethernet ports on some models.. "Two Gigabit Ethernet controllers standard, with load balancing and failover features, up to eight Ethernet ports per blade optional"
Click to expand...

It really depends on the options. If you where to add the additional Cisco modules and NIC modules, then yes, you could have more NICs. But the way the BladeCenter works is that you have 1 NIC connected to 1 switch.

From my network analysis, I don't think they will saturate a 1gb/s link. I was wanting to plan for the future bandwidth needs if it was possible.
 
MorfiusX said:
It really depends on the options. If you where to add the additional Cisco modules and NIC modules, then yes, you could have more NICs. But the way the BladeCenter works is that you have 1 NIC connected to 1 switch.

From my network analysis, I don't think they will saturate a 1gb/s link. I was wanting to plan for the future bandwidth needs if it was possible.
Click to expand...

I guess since I dont know a lot about blade centers isint helping much, but the switches you mentioned run an Cisco IOS, so I was thinking you could do aggregation to them. Does IBM have anything to say about this?
 
Yes the switches use IOS 12.1(22), so all the normal commands are available including the Ether Channel stuff. Each switch has 20 ports: 1-14 are for each of the blades, 15-16 are for internal system management, 17-20 are external ports that can be trunked and aggregated. Each blade had two NICs: one goes to the first switch, one goes to the second switch. Each of these switches are currently trunked to the 6509 which uses the CatOS. Each blade has a trunk to to each of the BladeCenter switches. I then have configured virtual interfaces for each of the VLANs the blades should connect to.

On the topic of IBM... There support model is a pain in the butt. I might give my contact a call though and see what he says. It's not really an IBM issue though. The limitations are with the Cisco portion of the equipment.
 
I just talked to our bladecenter guy here. Are you wanting to do Etherchannel or 802.3ad LACP. He seemed to think if you are using standard LACP you can do it across chassis. ( I Did a quick search on Cisco's site and it was very vague about it across diffrent chassis)

Another thing he mentioned is you can buy some sort of module for the blade centers that take the internal NIC card connections and make them external. Then you could plug them into whatever you want, and however you want.

EDIT: -If IBM sold you the equipment and you have a contract with them, then it's their responsibility, but on that note I remember us having issues with support for the Cisco portion.. Our bladecenter guy came to us with Spannign tree questions, because IBM and Cisco were pointing fingers..
 
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