Tag Archives: hp

HP Gen 8 servers and networking issues – TG3 driver

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There is a bug in the tg3 driver on the ESXi hosts (1gbit broadcom cards in the new hosts). If the network card is put under load and netqueue is enabled it will sometimes decide to drop all traffic. Essentially i’ve disabled netqueue and the problems have gone away…. as per this vm kb :

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2035701

The isues will present themselves as log entires like so;

2012-11-19T18:58:52.137Z cpu17:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic8: RX NetQ allocated on 1
2012-11-19T18:58:52.138Z cpu17:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic8: NetQ set RX Filter: 1 [00:50:56:71:46:87 0]
2012-11-19T18:58:52.138Z cpu17:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic7: RX NetQ allocated on 1
2012-11-19T18:58:52.138Z cpu17:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic7: NetQ set RX Filter: 1 [00:50:56:71:46:87 0]
2012-11-19T18:59:12.139Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: NetQ remove RX filter: 1
2012-11-19T18:59:12.139Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: Free NetQ RX Queue: 1
2012-11-19T18:59:22.137Z cpu24:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: RX NetQ allocated on 1
2012-11-19T18:59:22.138Z cpu24:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: NetQ set RX Filter: 1 [00:50:56:71:46:87 0]
2012-11-19T18:59:42.138Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic7: NetQ remove RX filter: 1
2012-11-19T18:59:42.138Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic7: Free NetQ RX Queue: 1
2012-11-19T18:59:42.140Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: NetQ remove RX filter: 1
2012-11-19T18:59:42.140Z cpu21:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic4: Free NetQ RX Queue: 1
2012-11-19T19:00:02.139Z cpu28:4155)<6>tg3 : vmnic8: NetQ remove RX filter: 1

When Is A Trunk Not A Trunk?

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Very good article here – http://networkingnerd.net/2011/02/02/when-is-a-trunk-not-a-trunk/

Particuly like setting of Native vLAN and tagged networks over an HP trunk;

So, if HP refers to an uplink carrying multiple VLANs are a tagged port, then does HP have a “trunk”? In fact they do. In HPvania, a trunk is a logical construct that aggregates multiple ports into one logical link. For those of you that might be out there scratching your heads about this one, this means that when you “trunk” a group of ports on an HP switch, you are creating one LACP link from up to four individual ports. This kind of configuration should look like this:

Switch(config)#trunk 19-24
Switch(config)#trk1
Switch(config-trk)#lacp
Switch(config-trk)#vlan 1
Swtich(config-vlan)#untagged trk1
Swtich(config-vlan)#vlan 10
Swtich(config-vlan)#tagged trk1
Swtich(config-vlan)#vlan 99
Swtich(config-vlan)#tagged trk1

Those of you that are fans of irony will appreciate that the above config sets up this LACP port aggregation to pass multiple VLANs to another switch. In other words, we are configuring a Cisco “trunk” on top of an HP “trunk”.

Cisco VTP on HP Switches?

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Want to propergate vLan information across multiple switches?

Easy in the Cisco world…  Just use VTP – configure a server switch and  your away… (it also has its risks if you introduce another server switch with a lower ID)

What does HP have?  — GVRP (MVRP newer iteration).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Registration_Protocol

Multiple VLAN Registration Protocol (MVRP), which replaced GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP), is a standards-based Layer 2 network protocol, for automatic configuration of VLAN information on switches. It was defined in the 802.1ak amendment to 802.1Q-2005.

MSTP – nice blog on its inner workings here – http://blog.ine.com/2010/02/22/understanding-mstp/