Crossover teaming

[CAWJames]

Hi all,

 

We are in the process of clustering our 2 Hyper-v hosts, and have found ourselves with 4 NICS(5709c Quad port Dell cards) on each host for Live Migration/Heartbeat. I am planning to use simple crossover cables for the connection between them, but am I able to team 4 crossover cables using BACS, and then 2012r2 teaming when we upgrade? or doesn't it work without a switch to LACP/LAG?

 

Any insight would be good?

 

Thanks

 

James

[tmcd35]

Can't think of a great reason why it wouldn't work so long as teaming is set up on both servers. All a crossover cables does is makes sure signals are sent/received on the expected pins. I don't think the computers could tell the difference, it's a physical layer protocol.

 

2012R2 Teaming doesn't need LACP support (or any other teaming protocol) on the switch. It's all software based and in my experience is better/more reliable/easier to set up.

Edited December 8, 2014 by tmcd35

[CAWJames]

Well learn by doing!

 

Seems Broadcom proprietary SLB/Failover doesn't work but LACP does!

 

4 crossovers, LACP team with 9000 jumbo frames, all working fine and dandy in 4Gbps just need to see if it works as the heartbeat/LiveMigration network.

 

Thanks for the input

 

James

[smithson83]

How is this going, I have thought about doing something similar, but never got round to it.

[CAWJames]

See my above reply, LACP over crossover seems to work fine. Live migration works well, at least for small test VM's. Moving the bigger ones around may be another situation entirely!