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Simple use case: one ESXi host installed on a physical server with two 1G NICs, both connected to one ToR physical L3 switch. The ESXi host has one vSwitch with both NICs as active uplinks, for failover and bandwidth purposes.

So far I've always used a trunked etherchannel on the physical switch, even in case no VM will have NIC(s) faster than 1G. Is it right?

In case etherchannel is an unnecessary overkill in such a scenario (for which I couldn't find the best practice), shall the two ports be set as simple (separated) trunks? Wouldn't it cause loops? Wouldn't it lead to a broadcast frame sent by the physical switch, been duplicated over both ports?

kuma
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1 Answers1

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vSwitch does not send ingress traffic from one uplink out of the other so you don't get loops. In fact this is a very (most?) common configuration for vSwitch.

Etherchannel does allow more than 1Gbit/s per VM, as it hashes source-target IP to different uplinks so you may get 1Gbit/s per source-target IP pair.

IMHO - unless you're heavily bandwidth constrained, stick to standalone ports.

Don Zoomik
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