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Guys

I have setup a etherchannel on VIO 1.5 server .This contains four
physical adapters, three of which are forming link aggregasion while
fourth one being used as a backup adapter ( all four however connected
to same CISCO core switch)

Every thing works ok , except two things

1. First as alll of these adapters are giga bit , so i should get
atleast 3 GB network pipeline on VIO as well as on client lpars.. but
how to verify or check this belief?

2. Second, my network admin is saying that on cisco switch level , he
is getting some duplicate mac addresses...
He is also of the view that something has to be configured on cisco
switch level to support etherchannel setup on VIO server...but i am
not sure ... as for simple AIX level , etherchanneling has to be done
on AIX level , nothing required to be configured on switch level?
Should i allow him to create a so called " port trunk " on swich level
( on ports whcih are part of AIX ether channel) or just changing
protocol to LACP??? Please advice

Many thanks for help

Regards

On Jan 15, 8:37 pm, Polani <[email protected]> wrote:
> Guys
>
> I have setup a etherchannel on VIO 1.5 server .This contains four
> physical adapters, three of which are forming link aggregasion while
> fourth one being used as a backup adapter ( all four however connected
> to same CISCO core switch)
Whats the reason for having a backup adapter on the same core switch ?
>
> Every thing works ok , except two things
>
> 1. First as alll of these adapters are giga bit , so i should get
> atleast 3 GB network pipeline on VIO as well as on client lpars.. but
> how to verify or check this belief?
The total throughput might be 3GB but a single connections has still
only 1G.

A simple FTP Speed test:

ftp> put "| dd if=/dev/zero bs=32k count=100000" /dev/null

>
> 2. Second, my network admin is saying that on cisco switch level , he
> is getting some duplicate mac addresses...
That does not look really good.
> He is also of the view that something has to be configured on cisco
> switch level to support etherchannel setup on VIO server...but i am
> not sure ... as for simple AIX level , etherchanneling has to be done
> on AIX level , nothing required to be configured on switch level?
> Should i allow him to create a so called " port trunk " on swich level
> ( on ports whcih are part of AIX ether channel) or just changing
> protocol to LACP??? Please advice

Afaik the switch ports should be configured as a trunk. Afterwards i
would change the etherchannel to round-robin mode and do some testing
with ftp and check if you still have duplicate mac addresses.
Normaly you need no trunk ( Except for LACP or other "enhanced"
modes ) but it simplifies on the network site the administration
( Just think of having a wrong VLAN configured to one of the ports ).
So see a trunk is a logical entity.


For further testing you change both sides to LACP but i have seen
really no enhancement in LACP(IEEE 802.3ad ) mode

hth
Hajo

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:37:25 -0800, Polani wrote:

> Guys
>
> I have setup a etherchannel on VIO 1.5 server .This contains four physical
> adapters, three of which are forming link aggregasion while fourth one
> being used as a backup adapter ( all four however connected to same CISCO
> core switch)
>
> Every thing works ok , except two things
>
> 1. First as alll of these adapters are giga bit , so i should get atleast
> 3 GB network pipeline on VIO as well as on client lpars.. but how to
> verify or check this belief?

If the switch ports are not configured to act as a trunk/channel, you will
get "MAC flapping" as my network guys call it and fairly bad throughput.
Basically, AIX will put the same MAC address and some of the traffic on
each port, and the switch will not understand it.

>
> 2. Second, my network admin is saying that on cisco switch level , he is
> getting some duplicate mac addresses... He is also of the view that
> something has to be configured on cisco switch level to support
> etherchannel setup on VIO server...but i am not sure ... as for simple AIX
> level , etherchanneling has to be done on AIX level , nothing required to
> be configured on switch level? Should i allow him to create a so called "
> port trunk " on swich level ( on ports whcih are part of AIX ether
> channel) or just changing protocol to LACP??? Please advice
>
> Many thanks for help
>
> Regards

Our standard configuration for this is to set up the trunk/group on the
switch side with the LACP protocol turned on and set the Etherchannel
device on the AIX side to 8023ad mode.

-Chris