Setting Automatic Link Aggregation on ESXi-facing Ports for vCenter
The automatic Link Aggregation (LAG) feature is supported between Pluribus Networks switches for example to create clusters. The automatic Link Aggregation (LAG) logic was also extended to support connections between Pluribus Networks switches and ESXi hosts.
Netvisor ONE supports the LLDP and LACP protocols to aggregate (i.e., “to bundle”) the ports together. Since there are no custom type-length-value (TLV) fields for this purpose, 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 is enabled and the mode set to active on auto-lag with a fallback-option of individual to ensure that there is extra robustness in port bundling and to ensure that ports are bundled only if the ESXi host is running LACP to avoid any data path issues.
Note: The LACP protocol aggregates ports together when at least one side is configured to active mode and the other side is configured to passive (or active) mode. Therefore, for auto-trunking to work LACP needs to be enabled and set to passive mode on the ESXi distributed virtual switch. (Active mode is generally reserved for the physical switch to use to initiate the LACP negotiation with the passive host.) For more details, refer to the ESXi/vCenter documentation to enable EtherChannel (i.e., Link Aggregation) and LACP on a vSphere Distributed Switch Port Group.
Note: There are a few requirements and limitations for link aggregation in ESXi. Please refer to the respective ESXi documentation section for the specific details.
In addition, in Netvisor ONE the global parameter auto-trunk needs to be enabled (which is the default) for auto-trunking to work. Setting the system to no-auto-trunk turns off all auto-trunking. (Refer to the Configuring System Settings section for more details.)
You can also enable or disable trunking towards generic hosts (default value is off). (Refer to the Configuring High Availability chapter for more details on the trunking configuration.)
Below are the outputs from the trunk-show, port-show, and lldp-show commands that display the automatic creation of an auto-trunk (auto-129) across two switch ports set to LACP active mode facing two ESXi dvSwitch ports:
CLI (network-admin@switch) > 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@switch) > 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@switch) > lldp-show
local-port bezel-port chassis-id port-id port-desc sys-name
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------------- ---------------------------------- ------------------------------
42 42 vmnic2 00:50:56:98:07:56 port 25 on dvSwitch DEV-CN-Tests-1 esx-dev01.pluribusnetworks.com
44 44 vmnic3 00:50:56:98:07:57 port 24 on dvSwitch DEV-CN-Tests-1 esx-dev01.pluribusnetworks.com