LAG with 8 ports

The maximum number of ports you can add to a LAG on a PowerConnect 5224 is 4.  You can have up to 6 LAGs on the switch (thus encompassing all 24 ports).

The PowerConnect 6024 can do up to 7 ports per LAG, which is the only other managed Gigabit switch that Dell currently offers.

Yes, basically I need a bigger pipe to the server.  I have 2, 4 port intel NICs, and the goal is to have them load balancing across all 8 adapters.  So basically I dont need to setup a LAG to get this accomplished then?  Its all handled by the drivers and the card?  Intel is capable of teaming up to 8 adapters.

Joe

Well he had actually mentioned (I went back and read the email) that it was a 4 port LAG on 2 separate switches?  Is this possible?  Do I get what I need with this (a server with 1 IP and 8 ports balanced)?

Joe

The definition of a LAG is usually that all the ports that are members of the LAG are going to the end device(another switch, or an 802.3ad NIC team).  You'd effectively have 2 4-port LAGs, but on the server side of the equation, I don't think they could have the same IP address (each 802.3ad LAG would be a separate virtual NIC team).  What is it, precisely, that you are trying to accomplish?

I you're looking for some kind of solution to have a larger pipe for data to your server, You should check to see if your server NIC driver supports some kind of load-balanced NIC teaming, that would probably be more what you're looking for.  At that point, the switch would require no LAG configuration, and the load balancing would be done by the intermediate driver for the network cards in the server.  The options you have would vary, depending on the manufacturer (Intel and Broadcom are usually what we deal with, so make sure you know what chipset your NICs are using).

Message Edited by DELL-AndrewH on 07-06-2004 11:39 AM

You could implement Adapter Load Balancing (ALB) using the Intel Proset II software.  However, these limitations need to be considered:

1.  You will be moving all of the load balancing equations to the server, which may result in an increase in CPU utilization.

2.  The load balancing is for outgoing traffic, only.  Inbound traffic for the server will not be load balanced by the Intel ANS driver.

3.  Most Intel adapter teams use probe packets as a 'heartbeat' to determine if the other adapters in the team have failed.  This will increase the amount of broadcast traffic on your local network segment.

Before I could recommend any other alternate solutions, or whether ALB would be a better solution over what you networking consultant recommended, I would strongly recommend you look over your current network design, planned implementations, and the specific needs of the network and resources attached to said network.

Message Edited by DELL-AndrewH on 07-06-2004 04:24 PM

Replied Inline...

1.  You will be moving all of the load balancing equations to the server, which may result in an increase in CPU utilization.

Fine by me, its a file server, does nothing but serve files.

2.  The load balancing is for outgoing traffic, only.  Inbound traffic for the server will not be load balanced by the Intel ANS driver.

What we are most concerned with is outgoing traffic, I am basically maxxing out the bus at the moment, a 4 port 2Gbps Fibre channel card going into the machine and 2 4 port Ether cards going out.  I am thinking this is the best route for what we are doing anyways because we are serving 3-12MB files only, nothing really under that.

3.  Most Intel adapter teams use probe packets as a 'heartbeat' to determine if the other adapters in the team have failed.  This will increase the amount of broadcast traffic on your local network segment.

I thought I had seen a way to turn it off or limit that capability.  I could care less about failover, I simply need throughput, if an adapter on the card fails, so long as the team keeps cranking away, thats ok by me.  Thats something else to look into.

Before I could recommend any other alternate solutions, or whether ALB would be a better solution over what you networking consultant recommended, I would strongly recommend you look over your current network design, planned implementations, and the specific needs of the network and resources attached to said network.

This is a temporary implementation that wont be scaled, we will be moving to a complete fibre connected SAN with probably a 64port Qlogic Fibre/Ether switch and volume/file locking schemes.  Currently we are putting those plans together though.  The amount of bandwidth we require is rather large...

Joe