[THIN] Re: OT: NIC Teaming
- From: "Evan Mann" <emann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 09:11:10 -0500
I've experienced odd negotiation problems with my Cisco 3560's and other
devices, but never my Dell servers on my Catalyst 6513, with are all
auto-negotiation on the servers and the 6513.
The problem with this 1 NIC is the cable wasn't snapped into the patch
panel all the way, and it happened to be in a way that it could only
negotiate at 100 instead of GigE, odd.
On my 3560's, I've had problems where I force 100/full or 10/full and
try to link up to devices that are non-Cisco (such as some IAD's from my
ISP) and they just refuse to work. Have to set them to auto and they
link instantly.
As for my original issues, they went away the next morning during a copy
test. Slow for about 5 minutes, then it bumped to full speed.
Something was/is getting on the network and flooding out. Probably
excessive broadcasts, but since it comes and goes, it's really hard to
track down.
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Andrew Wood
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 5:08 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: NIC Teaming
Chris,
Come across the same thing myself. I've read a number of docs that state
setting the port speed will gain the best results, but have found in the
field a number of servers (dells especially) seem to operate better if
the port speed is set to auto on the server and fixed at the switch
port.
I think ultimately this setting is depenedent on both the server and
switch hardware, and the 'fix everything at 100mb/fd' is not a
networking silver bullet. Perhaps a better recommendation would be to
test fixing settings on servers and switches and implement whatever
comes out best in your environment?
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Walter, Chris
Sent: 03 December 2005 03:41
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: NIC Teaming
This is interesting, I have the same NIC's and had similar problems. I
believe we have the same switches as well. We do use teaming but only
for failover. I have one NIC set as a standby. The problem we have
with the 100 meg connections is that even though the switch is
configured for 100/full the server side will only connect if I set it to
auto even though it shows that it connects at 100/full. I have tried
updating the drivers, Bios and others. Sometimes resetting the switch
port fixes the problem. I gave up on it though because it was happening
right before our Q4. I found that if we switched the switch port to
1000/full and set the Broadcom nic to Auto that everything connecting ok
without errors on the switch port or server and I got my performance
back.
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Dirk Blose [mailto:Dirk.Blose@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 5:38 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: NIC Teaming
I don't know if anyone has chimed in on this yet but, the most important
thing with 100MB connections is to make sure the negotiate correctly.
The recommendation for Server connections is to set them on both the NIC
and switch port to be what you want such as 100/Full Duplex. If either
side is set to automatic a negotiation mis-match can occur which can
result in a serious performance issue. Try that and see if it helps.
Dirk Blose, MCSE, CCA
Lead Technical Analyst
(919) 765-4791
dirk.blose@xxxxxxxxxx
>>> emann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 12/01/05 7:14 AM >>>
Hopefully someone who really knows their stuff about NIC Teams and the
switch side configurations can help me out! Outside of my particular
issue, I was hoping we could spurr up a convo on what kind of NIC team
everyone uses, against what kind of switches, and for what reasons.
I use all dell servers which have dual Broadcam or Intel GigE NICs. I
have always teamed them in Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB) mode. The
requirements for this are basic, and based on my readings, it gives me a
quality mix of load balancing and failover.
Last night I discovered one of my servers had 1 NIC running at 1000 and
the other at 100. ALB is supposed to work just fine with this. I
discovered this because I was getting *HORRENDOUS* network performance
from this server. It was copying 5k chunks of data every 3 seconds or
so, that's how bad it was.
I disabled the NIC connected at 100 and things improved, but only
slightly. This server is connected to a GigE blade on a Cisco Cat6513.
I checked the port settings and QoS and all look normal. I'm trying to
figure out why the performance is so aweful. I'm not sure if it's
related to the team and 1 NIC being down, or something bigger is going
on.
The only requirements for ALB I've read are that no teaming is done on
the switch, and spanning tree if off. No teaming is done, and I have
spanning tree portfast off for this server, but spanning tree status is
still "forwarding". I couldn't get any good info on the switch end of
things to know for sure.
Anyone have any tips for me to look into? I need to do the typical
update NIC drivers, but this is my main production SQL server, so I
can't do it until this weekend, and I know this is really hurting
overall performance out to my users. I don't have this issue with any
other servers connected to the same switch using the same port setups
that I've seen.
And outside of t
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