Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5.57
h e Teaming And
Failover item in the
distributed port
group Edit Settings
dialog box provides
options for modify-
ing how a distrib-
uted port group
uses uplinks.
These settings were described in detail in the section “Coni guring NIC Teaming,” with
one notable exception—version 4.1 and higher distributed switches support a new load-
balancing type, Route Based On Physical NIC Load. When this load-balancing policy is
selected, ESXi checks the utilization of the uplinks every 30 seconds for congestion. In
this case, congestion is dei ned as either transmit or receive trafi c greater than 75 percent
mean utilization over a 30-second period. If congestion is detected on an uplink, ESXi
will dynamically reassign the VM to a different uplink.
Requirements for Load-Based Teaming
Load-Based Teaming (LBT) requires that all upstream physical switches be part of the same layer
2 (broadcast) domain. In addition, VMware recommends that you enable the PortFast or PortFast
Trunk option on all physical switch ports connected to a distributed switch that is using Load-
Based Teaming.
5.
Click OK when you have i nished making changes.
Later in this chapter in the section titled “Coni guring LACP,” we'll provide more detail on
vSphere's support for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), including how you would
coni gure a distributed switch for use with LACP. In that section, we'll also refer back to some of
this information on modifying NIC teaming and failover.
If you browse through the available settings, you might notice a Blocked policy option. This
is the equivalent of disabling a group of ports in the distributed port group. Figure 5.58 shows
that the Block All Ports setting is set to either Yes or No. If you set the Block policy to Yes, then
all trafi c to and from that distributed port group is dropped. Don't set the Block policy to Yes
unless you are prepared for network downtime for all VMs attached to that distributed port
group!
