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Can I aggregate two or more interface on ESXi 5.1u1 to connect (without a switch) another system that support this type of connection?

I want create a back-to-back link aggregation as like descripted in this document: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19963-01/html/821-1458/fpjvl.html

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1 Answers1

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The answer is NO, kinda... But probably no in your situation.

I use LACP (with a switch) over 10GbE ethernet to my NexentaStor storage servers... but that's something that is only possible via VMware 5.1 and through the use of distributed vSwitches. That's a feature only available at the vSphere Enterprise Plus license tier.

enter image description here

What I do in situations where LACP isn't available to VMware is create an LACP bond from the storage to the switch and assign two or more ports to a storage vSwitch on the ESXi side.
Unless you move to 10GbE, you won't be able to get more than 1GbE speeds over NFS from VMware to your NFS storage. But most environments just don't need that type of bandwidth.

enter image description here

And the Nexenta side...

nmc@san1:/$ show network 
Option ?  aggregation
LINK        PORT           SPEED DUPLEX   STATE     ADDRESS            PORTSTATE
aggr0       --             1000Mb full    up        a0:36:9f:1:9c:16   --
            igb2           1000Mb full    up        a0:36:9f:1:9c:16   attached
            igb1           1000Mb full    up        a0:36:9f:1:9c:15   attached

enter image description here

Also see: VMware Distributed vSwitches (VDS) - Design, theory, *real* use cases and examples?

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