Setting up 8600 ports for VMware ESX

[curtismo]

Needs some assistance in understanding the connecting VMware ESX servers to an Nortel ERS 8600. Had some issues and confusion whether the ports on the 8600 need to be MLTs to each ESX server or if they are normal VLAN trunk ports. We had some issues this past week with losing connection to an individual server in the VMware stack. Also wondering whether I should have STG Faststart enabled for the ESX ports.

The VMware docs are not very good if you don't use Cisco gear.

 

[patels9]

Is this still a problem for you?

 

[anthonyanderberg]

What do they say you should do with Cisco gear? A number of us have experience translating Cisco-Speak to Nortel-Babel.

 

[labigmac]

An MLT would be used if you want to increase the bandwidth to the ESX server. E.G 2 x 1Gb/s ports. BUT it does mean that the ESX server will need to be able to understand MLT. Which I am not sure if ESX supports this.

From a server side increasing bandwidth is called teaming, and is done more for fault tolerance than increasing bandwidth.

Vlan Tagging just enables multiple VLANs to be presented to the ESX server and ESX does support this. You can define it during the initial install phase.

I would not enable STG, Nortel recommend that its disabled on trunk links (MLT/LACP)

Cisco call MLT Ether channel
Vlan tagging is vlan tagging.

Not sure if ESX support LACP yet, but I am a big fan. Problem is if you want to use LACP you will need recent code from Nortel running on your 8600.

Expect you learnt all this since Aug anyway.

Regards,

Mat.

 

[PPrash]

We have 3 ESX servers tied to our dual 8600's. Each ESX server has uplinks to each 8600. We run no MLT or SMLT to the ESX servers and it functione perfect. We so run SMLT to closet stacks, etc. We were advised that MLT or SMLT is not needed to the ESX ports. They really only use one port at a time. Let me know if you go a MLT or SMLT direction and find a config from the ESX side that works. Our consultant from Dell setting up the ESX servers had no interest in looking deeper into the config for the ESX server side to utilize MLT. He advised standard "access" ports only were needed.