Host Networking

VM Squared supports several ways to configure host networking, this section outlines the recommended approaches.

Physical network card configuration#

It is recommended that the network cards in your VM Squared hosts meet the following requirements:

• Per-port link speeds of 25Gb or greater is recommended.
• Multiple cards can be leveraged to improve aggregate performance and link resilience.
• All available cards will be used to form a bond.
• A single LACP (802.3ad) bond is supported per system and will be automatically detected
• If multiple NICs are present but not in a LACP bond then TLB bonding will be used (one receive, multiple transmit with failover)
• All unused NICs should be disabled.
  • physically by unplugging
  • logically via BMC controls
  • logically by disabling switch ports

Physical network switch configuration#

Link speed and over-subscription#

Ethernet switches should meet these requirements:

• Per-port link speeds of 25Gb or greater is recommended.
  • faster link speeds help storage performance
• Port subscription ratios should match expected traffic patterns
  • switch uplinks should be sufficient to meet expected VM traffic
  • multi-rack deployments should ensure ample inter-switch capacity for storage traffic

Port Configuration#

• All unused ports should be disabled
  • All active ports are assumed to form part of a bond
• Servers should share the same untagged VLAN for cluster communication
• Servers should share the same VLAN for dashboard traffic
  • dashboard VLAN is untagged by default
  • VLAN ID can be set in the CLI menu

Link Aggregation and Bonding#

• LACP bonding is supported and a single bond should be created per host
  • LACP PDUs should be sent to advertise the bond
  • MLAG or VPC can be used if multiple switches are available
• TLB bonding is available if your switch does not support LACP
  • No additional switch configuration is required
  • Server transmit traffic will cycle between multiple physical NICs
  • A single NIC will hold the server MAC and be used to receive traffic
  • NIC failover will occur if a link failure is detected

    TLB bonding

    Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) allows VM Squared to leverage multiple links without additional switch configuration. Connect multiple ports to the same layer 2 network and TLB will be activated.

    Only Transmit traffic is load balanced, receive traffic is limited to a single NIC.

    TLB is resilient and will move between NICs if a link is lost.

• Port configurations should be identical on all hosts in the cluster
  • present the same tagged and untagged VLAN
• VM Squared handles per-VM network ACLs
  • ACLs are not mandated on the network fabric