Setting Automatic Link Aggregation on ESXi-facing Ports for vCenter
Currently, automatic Link Aggregation (LAG) is only supported between Pluribus Networks switches. With this feature, automatic Link Aggregation (LAG) includes ports between Pluribus Networks switches and ESXi hosts.
Netvisor ONE implements LLDP and LACP to bundle the ports. Since there are no custom type-length-value (TLV) probes, Netvisor ONE implements standard LLDP TLVs to uniquely identify ESXi hosts. The system description TLV is used to identify ESXi hosts and the system name is used to uniquely identify a specific ESXi host.
LACP mode is enabled and set to active on auto-lag with a fallback-option of individual to ensure that there is extra robustness in bundling and ensure that ports are bundled only if ESXi host is running LACP to avoid any data path issues.
You can enable or disable trunking towards hosts (default value is off).
The current global parameter auto-trunk needs to be ON (default) for this new settings to take effect. Setting auto-trunk to off turns off all trunking.
Example output from trunk-show, port-show and lldp-show.
CLI (network-admin@Leaf1) > trunk-show format trunk-id,switch,name,ports,lacp-mode,lacp-fallback,lacp-individual,status,
trunk-id name ports lacp-mode lacp-fallback lacp-individual status
-------- -------- ----- --------- ------------- --------------- -----------
129 auto-129 42,44 active individual none up,PN-other
CLI (network-admin@Leaf1) > port-show port 42,44 format all
port bezel-port status rswitch rem-ip rem-mac lport config trunk
---- ---------- --------------------------------------- -------- -------- ----------------- ------ ------ --------
42 42 up,PN-other,LLDP,trunk,LACP-PDUs,vlan-up 2987 :: 00:00:00:00:00:00 42 fd,10g auto-129
44 44 up,PN-other,LLDP,trunk,LACP-PDUs,vlan-up 2987 :: 00:00:00:00:00:00 44 fd,10g auto-129
CLI (network-admin@Leaf1) > lldp-show
local-port chassis-id port-id port-desc sys-name
---------- ---------- ----------------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------
42 vmnic2 00:50:56:98:07:56 port 25 on dvSwitch DEV-CN-Tests-1 esx-dev01.pluribusnetworks.com
44 vmnic3 00:50:56:98:07:57 port 24 on dvSwitch DEV-CN-Tests-1 esx-dev01.pluribusnetworks.com