Cluster and NIC speed auto negotiation

PiotrIr

Could you advice me one thing please?

I found in cluster best practices, link speed and duplex should be set up staticlly and not negotiated. It will complicate me switch set up so could you advice if I should do this?

Many thanks

nel

What kind of switches do you have?

PiotrIr

DELL PowerConnect 5448

nel

Speed "speed"

Duplex "duplex"

Both under the interface command:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/54XX/en/CLI/HTML/ethernet.htm#wp1017283

user manual for the switch:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/54XX/en/CLI/HTML/index.htm

PiotrIr

Many thanks for your reply.

Probably I wasn’t clear in my post. I have no problem how to do this; my problem is if I should do this. In my network there are some devices with 1GB speed, some with 100MB and if I set up different speed on different ports it will be a little bit messy.

So if I don’t have to do this I would preface use auto negotiation. Unfortunately it will be against cluster best practices….

What I should do?

nel

i couldnt answer definately as i dont work or had much to do with clustering but im pretty sure we leave our's on auto negotiate and they obviously pick up the 1gb speed and full duplex settings. That best practice maybe incase they dont pick up the correct settings.

Maybe someone with clustering experiance could chime in with that.

HeroPsycho

You absolutely should do this.

Do you really want to take the chance of your cluster possibly splitting because of a port duplex or speed setting not negotiating?

Do it "by the book" unless there's a very compelling reason not to.

PiotrIr

Thanks, clear and reasonable answer. I will do it.

May I ask you to look at my network settings? It is important because I’m using team (Intel NIC) in Switch Fault Tolerant mode (obviously only for public network, in private I have two different subnets, iSCSI - MPIO) and I know it may cause some problems which I would like to avoid. I’m using Windows Server 2008 cluster for SQL and Hyper-V

NIC configuration settings:
1. iSCSI
- set speed 1GB full duplex
- set jumbo frames 9000
- disable TCP IPv6
- clear “register the connection’s address in DNS
- disable WINS
2. HeartBeat
- set speed 100MB full duplex
- disable all protocols instead TCP IPv4
- clear “register the connection’s address in DNS
- disable WINS
3. Public
- set speed 1GB full duplex
Team
- Switch Fault Tolerant
- Set primary/secondary (switch1/switch2)
- Set IPv4 address
- Set IPv6 address
- DNS suffix for this connection abc.internal
4. Set network priority
1. Public Team
2. Private
3. iSCSI

Does it make sense? Any advices regarding switch configuration (e.g. spanning tree, port fast)
Best Regards