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October 21st, 2014 09:00
NIC Teaming Query
I have two Cisco 2960 switches, up-linked together.(not stacked)
Can I create a NIC team with the first option "Smart Load Balancing and Failover" and keep one NIC on Switch-A and another NIC on Switch-B?
Also with the above cisco setup (no stack module) can I have a LACP team? LACP group should take one port from each switch to have a switch redundancy.
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DELL-Josh Cr
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October 21st, 2014 11:00
Hi avilt,
Since the switches are not stacked it would not be recommended to use smart load balancing. That NIC mode creates a virtual nic that has its own IP and MAC address. If it was connected to two switches that are not stacked they would each have a path to that address and it could potentially cause loops on broadcasts. It may work if spanning-tree is enabled but would put one of the links into discarding mode and the benefit of the load balancing would be lost.
As for LACP, Cisco does not support etherchannel to multiple switches as the switches will not know the port states on the other switch. So you either need to stack the switches or connect both NIC ports into the same switch.