David_Wallis

Anyone had any problems with teams using the Broadcom on board cards in the IBM X335's??

Works fine non teamed

But running as a team it wont hold a connection?

get about 1 reply from pings in 100.

David

[Edited by David_Wallis - 11/23/2003 3:53:14 PM]

TolTec

We have just bought some x335s, they are connected up to 3Com 3300 (100Mbit) switches but I have not checked out teaming the cards yet.

I think I will check them out after reading your post, I will let you know the results.

David_Wallis

When you install the drivers select everything.. (it doesnt make sense.)

think its the BASP you need to install..

Either way you cant seem add teaming or vlan support if youve allready done a custom install.. you have to remove the drivers and then do a full install..

Got a few IBMs running server farms etc (due to cabling being cool ) and this ones had new disks, 2new m/boards and 2 new disks.. and its not even a month old.. I blame distributor building it..

Ive asked them not to touch in future.

ps think the switches are a catalyst 4507R's (iirc)
David


[Edited by David_Wallis - 11/20/2003 8:22:50 PM]

TolTec

Useful to know thanks, I was just about to install the IBM drivers as the 335s were built using the default Windows installed drivers.

Chris.

[Edited by TolTec - 11/21/2003 8:47:18 AM]

David_Wallis

TOP

David_Wallis

bump

*Sonic*

David

This is common with all Broadcom on board Lan Adapters I have seen no matter what the server, be it IBM, Dell, and now Compaq

Team drivers still are pants, and I never install teams anymore

Did some network sniffing on some Dells running Citrix (a 16 bit DOS based foxpro app kept locking up intermittently) and on the team it was sending out packets on one MAC address, and waiting for a reply on the other MAC address, and this was casuing the odd dropped packet, and duplicate IP conflicts

Also the Team driver was showing a thousand collisions a second when plugged into a switch !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Broke the team all was 100% perfect

*Sonic*

Also I cant remember off the top of my head, but you have to enable something on the ports on Cisco Switches for teamed cards, otherwise you get pretty much no connection (I guess similar to what your experiencing)

Steve

HHxx

I think its ieee 802.3ad lacp you have to configure on the switch.

Somthing like this?

Never really tested teaming yet, will do soon though

David_Wallis

I was under the impression, certainly with teamed fail on fault adaptors that they have a firmware mac address and they can also dynamically assign a mac address to the card.. ie spoof the mac address on the second card.

that link describes 802.3ad..

Let me just VPN into work and do some screen shots...

my VPN client will kill my net connections though.. (could post from work via RDP etc..)

Back in 10.

David

David_Wallis

HHxx

I'm more awake now

Just did a quick search in google for "broadcom teaming" and the results don't look good

From the posts people say that teaming works for a short while then bang, nothing. Haven't heard of any good reports about it yet. Will ask around and see if anyone has got it working yet.

H

David_Wallis

Cheers.. Im used to teaming with compaq.. so this shouldnt be too hard

yeah works to start with then bang doesnt work... normally when Im walking back from the comms room to my desk..

Wondered / hoped it was a cisco error, may just log a call with IBM.

doesnt seem to be any firmware / driver updates..

May just see if port aggregation has any failover? Ie if it still works with one link connected then I would get the same end result, just means the networks team would have to do some work..

David

*Sonic*

Yes David you are correct with the MAC addressess, but what I found was that it was still trying to either send or recieve on the MAC address that is supposed to be hidden, under normal network operations this wouldnt really be an issue, as you get the odd dropped packets anyway, BUT on Citrix it kept throwing the app out & freezing, like the Java Citrix Client does, as it relies on 0 packet loss

When you team the compaqs where they Broadcom too? or Compaq (Intel)

Steve

David_Wallis

they are the intel nic's

are the g3's using broadcom's?

David

*Sonic*

Yep

All G3's are broadcoms now sadly, but they dont use the standard broadcom drivers like the Dells do with the BASP stuff, they do use the Compaq/HP Team Software, but they are still problematic to the point where we cannot use them except on Novell, as they dont use the team driver as such for teaming

David_Wallis

we use g3's on other sites iirc..

We have just placed an order for two new g3 DL380's

I need to get this working..

David

*Sonic*

Out of curiosity have you tried them in a non Cisco Switch?

I'll do some asking around tomorrow from the other guys at work, although an alternative for the G3's is to buy the intel server NICS from Compaq/HP afaik there is now only one NIC left (dual port 10/100/1000) that compaq still sell with the Intel Chipset

This is what we use for Novell's Ichain & Netware 6 as the broadcom drivers on Netware dont work properly with UDP, so timesync doesnt work amonsgt other things

If you want mail me, and ill try and get some more info

Steve

David_Wallis

I havent tried a non cisco switch as there isnt one handy..

I have seen a 4 port netgear 10/100 floating about so may try that tomorrow.

David

dowser

With Compaq/HP teaming drivers I've never had a problem as long as the team is configured for fail-over only.

Trying to aggregate causes problems, unless both ports are connected to the same switch (on a Cat6000 anyway)....which defies the logic of being resilient to a switch failure.

Richard

David_Wallis

bump

David_Wallis

bump

HHxx

Bump

Have heard of a site using the Broadcom's in fail over mode on Cisco's running fine using the Compaq teaming stuff. Its been up a running for a couple of weeks so not sure on stability in the long run yet.

My teaming testing has been halted at the moment while I finish off some clusters at the moment.