nic teaming / vlan interface bandwidth.

[ADMaster]

Hi all,

I setup nic teaming on my SCCM box a few weeks ago.

Server is 2016, switch is cisco 6509

I used LACP.

The nic team reports functional with 2Gbps on the server

SNMP tools report the po interface has 2G as well.

The clients and the server are in different vlans.

The edge switch is ether channel 2G fibre as well.

I put the link to the test today, I imaged 2 suites at once.

task manager was only report ~990 Mbps

I logged in to SNMP monitor the PO interface was at 48% however the vlan interface was at 98%.

I found this on cisco forums

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/10251226/what-max-bandwidth-l3-vlan-interface

 

But that is not what I saw today.

Any advice please?

[Steve21]

The short version is nic teeming doesn't work like that sadfully, basically each connection from the host still gets assigned to one physical nic, so if you're running 4 VMs behind the virtual nic you could have 4 physicals nics so the server runs at 4. If you have one VM/real host behind the virtual switch you get one nic, even if you have 20 connections etc

 

Yes you get failover etc but you won't see any bandwidth improvement for a single server unless something's changed recently

 

Might want to have a read of this as it's what I found when I was looking at this before

 

http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=14032

 

Steve

Edited August 14, 2017 by Steve21

[ADMaster]

My SCCM box is physical can post details of it's nic tomorrow

[LytchettNM]

Hi, so just to double check you say you have used LACP in the team this LACP config needs to be on both the server and the LAG in the switch.

Note that the link is not 1 x 2GB it is still 1GB but you now have 2 links at 1GB so if you should be able achieve better than 1GB but this would be dependant on the drive array the data is coming being able to provide the throughput, the server be able to cope with the load, the switch coping with the throughput and the NIC in the server being fully supported for teaming.

I have also seen NIC duplex issues while running in a LAG.

[Steve21]

My SCCM box is physical can post details of it's nic tomorrow

 

The box may be, but the teamed-NIC "should" be the multiplexer driver.

 

The old saying is a teamed nic is like a motorway, lets more traffic through but not at a faster speed. 1x 10GB isn't the same as 10x 1GB etc

 

The one thing I would check is the teamed NICs are they actually setup for load balancing rather than hot-standbys etc? (Never know 2016 may have changed the above, but sure it's always been the case)

 

Steve

[ADMaster]

OK Here are some of the specs

I have an HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 32 GB ram so I don't think that is the bottle neck.

 

I get the analogy about the motorway but the server should still report 2G.

half the clients should get 1G and the other half get the other 1G connection.

 

I'll try and keep an eye on the SNMP monitoring but those were the last 2 suites to be imaged before term starts.

 

SNMP shows almost 1G on one link a little bit of traffic on the second link almost 1G on the team and 1G on the vlan interface.

 

Here are some screenshots of my NIC team.

[Steve21]

If you want to test the theory easily just get two large files and copy them from the sccm box to 2 separate computers, both ports should activate if they're setup right as it's different processes etc

 

Would be an easy way to see if it's happy or not

 

Steve