Re: [Bridge] Bridging vSwitches in VMwares ESXi

[Ryan Whelan <ryan.whelan@tbamerica.com>]

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it seems the fix for this would be for vmware to do a better job 'fencing'
the secondary pNIC when in an active/passive setup

im really disappointed to find out this isn't an issue i can work around
(without compromising redundancy, or replacing the vSwitch etc)

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Robert LeBlanc <robert@leblancnet.us>wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Ryan Whelan <ryan.whelan@tbamerica.com>
> wrote:
> > oh good- glad to find out im not crazy. we do have 2 pNICs in the
> external
> > facing vSwitch.  Even when setting them as active/passive, its still an
> > issue.
> >
> > so its a confirmed issue with vmware- do they have any intention on
> > correcting it? do we know?
> >
>
> Yes as long as the pNIC is attached, even if in standby mode it causes
> a problem.
>
> It is an issue, but they won't fix it for two reasons. 1. They will
> never create a bridge between two vSwitches/VLANs, and 2. a fix would
> introduce more overhead and reduce flexibility and since they adhere
> to #1, it doesn't make sense. The flexibility they lose is multiple
> pNICs to one or more switches without having to have any trunking
> protocols.
>
> You can get around the problem by buying the Cisco Nexus virtual
> switch, it's a real layer 3 switch, but it's a pricy option.
>
> If you want a bridge in a VM, then only pNIC per switch (no
> redundancy). The other option, try to make the bridge a router
> instead. For us we wanted a transparent firewall, so it was easy to
> change the configuration to proxyarp for a transparent router instead.
>
> Robert LeBlanc
> Life Sciences & Undergraduate Education Computer Support
> Brigham Young University
>
>
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