VMWare NIC load balancing

ASE001 · 13 Jan 2014 at 13:42

I’ve have two NIC’s that I have configured on one virtual switch. This virtual switch is then routed via port group to a VM running NAS4FREE. NAS4FREE is then configured to provide a NFS share via this switch Port group. No matter how I configure load balancing on this virtual switch I can’t get it to balance the load across the two NIC’s (according the network performance counters). Appearing to utilize only one NIC. Is it that the VMWARE only load balances multiple port groups across the two NIC’s, but not traffic from one port group?
If this is the case would it be better to provide two port groups from the same virtual switch to the VM and let NAS4FREE do the load balancing?
I have tried configuring my switch ports with and without load balancing (paired), but both configurations make no difference to the results?

The NAS4FREE VM provides NFS storage to two other ESX servers.

Little_Crow · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:07

Check the properties of your vSwitch, specifically the 'NIC Teaming' tab - it might even be worth posting it here for people to advise on.
The help page in that window is actually pretty good for explaining each of the options if you're unsure.

Be advised though, if you're expecting to be able to join 2x1Gb links and see your copies go twice as fast, it doesn't work that way. The most you will ever get from a single server to a single client is 1Gb.
It's when you have multiple clients that the aggregated bandwidth makes a difference

Mr-White · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:30

Have a read of this

http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/04/10/etherchannel-and-ip-hash-or-load-based-teaming/

MW

ASE001 · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:51

Thanks Little_Crow, that makes sense and seems to confirm what I am seeing. What I'm after is each of my ESX servers load balancing across both NIC's to the NAS4FREE server along with other traffic. Maximizing the bandwidth to NAS.

................................/-----> ESX2
ESX1 (NAS4FREE) <---|------> Archive Server
................................\-----> ESX3

Sorry for the dots, seems to remove spaces!

Little_Crow · 14 Jan 2014 at 13:27

Check the link Mr-White provided, it covers all of your options for load balancing.

The one thing to note is that 'Load Based Teaming' (Which is probably the most useful of the options) is only available on Distributed Virtual Switches, which requires Enterprise Plus licensing.