Loading

×Sorry to interrupt
CSS Error

Refresh

Cookie Preference Center

General Information on cookies

When you visit our website, we use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience. This information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies by clicking on the different category headings to find out more and change your settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on the site and the services we are able to offer. Further information can be found in our

Cookie Policy.

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary

Always Active

Strictly Necessary

Strictly necessary cookies are always enabled since they are essential for our website to function. They enable core functionality such as security, network management, and website accessibility. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but this may affect how the website functions. For more information please visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Cookie Details‎

Performance

Performance

Performance

Performance cookies are used to analyze the user experience to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. They allow us to know which pages are the most and least popular, see how visitors move around the site, optimize our website and make it easier to navigate.

Cookie Details‎

Please confirm your settings by refreshing the page.

Functional

Functional

Functional

Functional cookies help us keep track of your past browsing choices so we can improve usability and customize your experience. These cookies enable the website to remember your preferred settings, language preferences, location and other customizable elements such as font or text size. If you do not allow these cookies, then some or all of these services may not function properly.

Cookie Details‎

Advertising

Advertising

Advertising

Advertising cookies are used to send you relevant advertising and promotional information. They may be set through our site by third parties to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant advertisements on other sites. These cookies do not directly store personal information, but their function is based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device.

Cookie Details‎

Advertising Cookies

Consent Leg.Interest

Select All Vendors

Select All Vendors

Select All Hosts

Select All

Clear Filters

Information storage and access

Apply

Confirm My Choices Reject All Allow All

Skip to main content

Products and Accounts

Support

Knowledge

Communities

Success

Learning

My Subscriptions

Loading

Knowledge Base

Host requirements for link aggregation (etherchannel, port channel, or LACP) in ESXi (1001938)

Last Updated: 10/11/2021Categories: Best PracticesTotal Views: 115520Language:
Chinese (Simplified)Portuguese (European)JapaneseSpanishEnglish

149 like this article

Subscribe to get an email
newsletter with new updates

149 people found this helpful Please provide article feedback:

Learn how VMware Skyline Advisor and Skyline Health Diagnostics work together to provide proactive intelligence and self-service log analysis.

Use Skyline Advisor to avoid issues before they occur across VCF, vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vROps & Horizon. Skyline Findings are based on top KBs, VMSAs/CVEs and design best practices.

Use Skyline Health Diagnostics to root cause vSphere & vSAN logs when an issue occurs. Skyline Health Diagnostic Findings are based on top KBs and VMSA/CVEs. You can use the Skyline Health Diagnostics tool in online or offline mode.

If you require additional help from technical support, please use Skyline Advisor to initiate a Log Assist to reduce time to upload logs. TSEs can also initiate logs to reduce effort.

Details

These concepts are used in an ESXi network environment. To accomplish network redundancy, load balancing, and fail-over, you must:

Enable link aggregation on the physical switch.
Note: Link aggregation is also known as Ether-Channel, Ethernet trunk, port channel, LACP, vPC, and Multi-Link Trunking.

Set up the ESXi Virtual Switch configuration to be compatible with these concepts.

Solution

ESXi requirements and limitations for link aggregation:

ESXi host only supports NIC teaming on a single physical switch or stacked switches.

Link aggregation is never supported on disparate trunked switches.

The switch must be set to perform 802.3ad link aggregation in static mode ON and the virtual switch must have its load balancing method set to Route based on IP hash.

Enabling either Route based on IP hash without 802.3ad aggregation or vice-versa disrupts networking, so you must make the changes to the virtual switch first. That way, the service console is not available, but the physical switch management interface is, so you can enable aggregation on the switch ports involved to restore networking.

Note: Due to network disruption, changes to link aggregation should be done during a maintenance window.

Do not use for iSCSI software multipathing. iSCSI software mulitpathing requires just one uplink per vmkernel, and link aggregation gives it more than one.

Do not use beacon probing with IP HASH load balancing.

Do not configure standby or unused uplinks with IP HASH load balancing.

VMware supports only one Etherchannel bond per Virtual Standard Switch (vSS).

ESXi supports LACP on vDS only.

For more information, see Enabling or disabling LACP on an Uplink Port Group using the vSphere Web Client (2034277).

In vSphere Distributed Switch 5.5 and later, all load balancing algorithms of LACP are supported.

ESXi load balancing should match the physical switch load balancing algorithm. For questions on which load balancing algorithm the physical switch uses, please refer to the physical switch vendor.

Limitations of LACP in vSphere:

LACP is only supported on vSphere Distributed Switches.

LACP is not supported for software iSCSI mulitpathing.

LACP configuration settings are not present in Host Profiles.

Running LACP inside any guest OS (including nested ESXi hosts) is not supported.

LACP cannot be used in conjunction with the ESXi Dump Collector.

For this feature to work, the vmkernel port used for management purposes must be on a vSphere Standard Switch.

Port Mirroring cannot be used in conjunction with LACP to mirror LACPDU packets used for negotiation and control.

The teaming health check does not work for LAG ports as the LACP protocol itself is capable of ensuring the health of the individual LAG ports. However, VLAN and MTU health check can still check LAG ports.

Enhanced LACP support is limited to a single LAG to handle the traffic per distributed port (dvPortGroup) or port group.

You can create up to 64 LAGs on a distributed switch. A host can support up to 64 LAGs.

Note: the number of LAGs that you can actually use depends on the capabilities of the underlying physical environment and the topology of the virtual network. For example, if the physical switch supports up to four ports in an LACP port channel, you can connect up to four physical NICs per host to a LAG.

LACP is currently unsupported with SR-IOV.

As seen in the table below, Basic LACP (LACPv1) is only supported on vSphere versions 6.5 or below. Upgrading ESXi to 7.0 may result in the physical switch disabling the LAG ports on ESXi hosts using Basic LACP.

For more information, see Converting to Enhanced LACP Support on a vSphere Distributed Switch.

Upgrading LACP from v1 to v2 is an automated two-step process which may result in a transient connectivity issue. The Management vmknic (For example, vmk0) should be migrated to another vDS or vSS prior to the upgrade.

LACP Compatibility with vDS

vCenter Server version

vDS version

Host version

Compatibility

vCenter Server 7.0

vDS 7.0/6.6/6.5

ESXi 7.0

Only supports LACP v2

vCenter Server 6.7

vDS 6.6/6.5/6.0

ESXi 6.7

Only supports LACP v2

vCenter Server 6.5

vDS 6.5/6.0/5.5/5.1/5.0

ESXi 6.5

LACPv1 supports 5.1

LACP v2 supports 5.5/6.0/6.5

vCenter Server 6.0

vDS 6.0/5.5/5.1/5.0

ESXi 6.0

LACPv1 supports 5.1

LACP v2 supports 5.5/6.0

Note: As with any networking change, there is a chance for network disruption so a maintenance period is recommended for changes. This is especially true on a vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) because the Distributed Switch is owned by vCenter and the hosts alone cannot make changes to the vDS if connection to vCenter is lost. Enabling LACP can complicate vCenter or host management recovery in production down scenarios, because the LACP connection may need to be broken to move back to a Standard Switch if necessary (since LACP is not supported on a Standard Switch).

Related Information

For more information on ESXi networking concepts, see the VMware Virtual Networking Concepts.

For more information on VLAN configuration for NIC teaming, see VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines (1003806).

To configure EtherChannel NIC teaming on ESXi and a physical switch, see Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with ESXi/ESX (1004048).

To configure ESXi for Etherchannel, see Configuring LACP on an Uplink Port Group using the vSphere Web Client

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

简体中文: ESXi 和 ESX 链路聚合的主机要求 (2075218)

Português: Requisitos de host ESX/ESXi para agregação de link (2032469)

Detectable by VMware SkylineTM

Actions

Copy

link to clipboard
copied!

Print

Language:
Chinese (Simplified)Portuguese (European)JapaneseSpanishEnglish

Attachments

Additional Resources

No results for undefined

Ask The Community

Get answers quickly from VMware experts in the community

Post Subject

CONTINUE IN COMMUNITIES

Related Products:

VMware vSphere ESXi

VMware VirtualCenter

VMware vCenter Server

VMware ESX Server

Related Versions:

Take Our Survey

Was this article helpful?

YES

NO

Copyright © 2005-2024 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Terms of Use

Your California Privacy Rights

Privacy

Accessibility

Cookie Settings

Support Assistant