How to configure a trunk between a VMware server and a HP Procurve Switch.
You can decide by yourself what to configured first. I will explainthe settings for the VMware ESX server first and than I will explain the switch configuration.
Vmware ESX Server
Login to the VMware VCenter Console.
Click on an ESX Server > Configuration > Networking
When you are are in the Networking Tab go to VSwtich0 > Propteries
Select the vSwitch and click on Edit.
Select the Tab > NIC Teaming.
When you are in the NIC Teaming tab > Load Balancing > select Route based on IP Hash
When you have select this option. Click on OK.
Update 5-3-2012 Note: In vmware esx 5 you may have to set the settings above on 2 locations.
Configuration HP Switch
First Note: on the HP Procurve switch you should not run IP Routing. IP routing will cause troubles with trunking. I noticed that the HP switch don’t configure the trunk when IP routing is enabled.
Second Note: On HP Procurve switches has a limitation for a trunk of 4GB. In contrast to Cisco where you can create an EtherChannels can be made of 8GB.
HP Procurvse Switch
First logon to the HP Procurve Switch and go to the configuration mode. ( Configure Terminal ) Make sure you go to the interface, give it a name so you can reconize it in the web-interface.
Enable also Flow-Control on the interface ports. Or configure it globally on the whose switch.
interface A1 name "connection-to-esx" flow-control exit interface A2 name "connection-to-esx" flow-control exit interface A3 name "connection-to-esx" flow-control exit
When you have configured the interfaces. You can configured the trunks for these interface. You can configure a trunk via the following commands:
trunk A1-A3 Trk1 Trunk
After configuring a trunk, you need to configure spanning-tree ( I maybe possible it’s configured automatically on the trunk ports but globally it’s not. )
spanning-tree spanning-tree Trk1 priority 4
Maybe clarify the second note a bit, you can create aggregated links with FastEthernet ports too. And why is ip routing causing trouble with this kind of setup? How would you trunk ports on a l3 switch then?
When a hp procurve switch 4200 for example is in routing mode it won’t create a trunk port it reverts it back to default. when you disable the ip routing you can create the trunk port. ( it sounds strange, but experienced it several times ) That when I enabled IP routing the trunks lost.
How to configure it on a l3 switch I haven’t test it ( not on a 54xx series )