Re: 10-GigE for servers

[Alex Thurlow <alex () blastro com>]

As long as it's not a single connection that you're looking to get over 
1Gb, etherchannel should actually work.  It uses a hash based on (I 
believe) source and destination IP and port, so it should roughly 
balance connections between the servers.  The other option, if you're 
using Linux, is to use balance-rr mode on the bonding driver.  This 
should deliver per-packet balancing and the switch doesn't have to know 
anything about the bonding.  Documentation for the bonding driver is here:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/howto/question/static/linux-ethernet-bonding-driver-howto.php

--
Alex Thurlow
Blastro Networks

http://www.blastro.com
http://www.roxwel.com
http://www.yallwire.com


On 5/1/2009 12:55 PM, Jason Shoemaker wrote:
> My company is looking for ways to improve throughput for data transfers
> between individual servers.  We’re exploring the creation of Etherchannels
> using multiple server NICs, but Etherchannel seems to have the limitation of
> not supporting per-packet load-balancing, therefore limiting traffic between
> two individual hosts to 1 Gig.
>
> In most of my research, I’ve seen 10-GigE used for traffic aggregation and
> for the “unified fabric” solution that Cisco and others are pushing.  I’m
> interested in knowing if any of you have attempted to implement 10-GigE at
> the host level to improve network throughput between individual servers and
> what your experience was in doing so.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jason

--
Alex Thurlow
Blastro Networks

http://www.blastro.com
http://www.roxwel.com
http://www.yallwire.com