HP Proliant - Cisco Catalyst - NIC Teaming

I don't know Cisco (can't even pretend to know Cisco atm either). Have a problem for everyone.

We have enable NIC teaming on an HP Proliant server running Novell 6.5.

One of the NICS isn't lit. We've troubleshot the issue to the point where we know both NICs are working so it's a Cisco issue.

How does the Cisco need to be configured in order to allow for NIC Teaming?

Let me know if there's any other questions that need answering.

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Comments

mikej412

What happens when you unplug the NIC that is lit? Does the other NIC take over providing network fault tolerance?

On callmanager servers the NICs don't load balance (or increase bandwidth) -- or rather, I've never seen them do that. Not sure about the expected behaviour with Novell.

Illusionking

What happens when you unplug the NIC that is lit? Does the other NIC take over providing network fault tolerance?

When the NIC is unplugged from the server nothing happens. However, you can move the cable from NIC1 to NIC2 and the NIC2 lights up and communicates normally.

We're trying to increase the throughput on the server so it will essentially run at 2gb (they should act as 1 device).

We're not trying to do this for redundancy, just for the increased throughput.

Thank you

Also thought I'd add that we had tried this at one point with an HP Procurve 5300 series but it turned out that it's not capable of doing this.

dtlokee

You may need to configure the Cisco switch interfaces as a LACP etherchannel, or just etherchannel in the "on" mode. I think the switch sees the second connection as a loop and shuts off the interface (due to spanning tree), is the link light on the switch amber?

mikej412

Are you configured for etherchannel?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk213/technologies_configuration_example09186a008089a821.shtml

Illusionking

It is configured for EtherChannel

Edit - Granted I'm not sure if it's configured right. I'm going through your link currently.

binarysoul

Are you sure this is not a speed mismatch issue, i.e, different speed/duplex settings on the NIC and on the switch port. Have you properly configured the HP Teaming Utility? Also, have you updated the firmware and the driver on the NICs to eliminte that as an issue?

I'm proabably asking more questions than answering, but thought to give you some thoughts