Port Load sharing

[Paul11]

After i enable Lacp .. port is not sharing. Utilization is high on Link 1 only.
I want to use load balance on both links.
Please kindly see the below output and advice thanks.

* I try L2 static, L3_L4 and LACP. all the same ports are not load balance. *

enable sharing 1 grouping 1,4

enable sharing 1 grouping 1,4 L3_L4

enable sharing 1 grouping 1,4 algorithm address-based L3_L4 lacp


CoreSW # sh port 1,4 utilization bandwithPort Link Link Rx Peak Rx Tx Peak Tx
State Speed % bandwidth % bandwidth % bandwidth % bandwidth
================================================================================
Link_1> A 1000 82.06 94.94 48.23 55.72
Link_2> A 1000 0.25 0.30 1.34 1.57
================================================================================
> indicates Port Display Name truncated past 8 characters
Link State: A-Active, R-Ready, NP-Port Not Present, L-Loopback

CoreSW #sh sharing
Load Sharing Monitor
Config Current Agg Ld Share Ld Share Agg Link Link Up
Master Master Control Algorithm Group Mbr State Transitions
==============================================================================
1 1 LACP L3_L4 1 Y A 0
L3_L4 4 Y A 0
==============================================================================
Link State: A-Active, D-Disabled, R-Ready, NP-Port not present, L-Loopback
Load Sharing Algorithm: (L2) Layer 2 address based
(L3_L4) Layer 3 address and Layer 4 port based
Number of load sharing trunks: 1


Core2 # sh lacp lag 1
Lag Actor Actor Partner Partner Partner Agg Actor
Sys-Pri Key MAC Sys-Pri Key Count MAC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 0 0x03e9 00:04:96:34:b2:e1 0 0x03e9 2 00:04:96:34:b2:e0

Port list:

Member Port Rx Sel Mux Actor Partner
Port Priority State Logic State Flags Port
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 0 Current Selected Collect-Dist A-GSCD-- 1001
4 0 Current Selected Collect-Dist A-GSCD-- 1012
================================================================================
Actor Flags: A-Activity, T-Timeout, G-Aggregation, S-Synchronization
C-Collecting, D-Distributing, F-Defaulted, E-Expired

[Harkanwaljeet_S]

Hi Guys,
This whole thread is quite informative and helped me to correct my understanding on Load sharing on Extreme x450 switches.

But i have couple of questions.

Brief:
In my case, two x450a connected to each other; a static load-sharing (2 physical ports, address based L2) is running and only one of the port is 80% utilized while the 2nd port in LAG has less than 5%. I can understand (or better word is assume) that majority of the traffic has same source and destination MAC, though I do not have wireshark or other logs to support this statement.

Problematic scenario:
There were massive outages reported and during troubleshooting on these Extreme switches, it was found that utilization of one port in load sharing touched 100% but for the 2nd port, it remained same as earlier.

Few of activities performed then:
1) disable/enable of 2nd port on both switches but no change.
2) Disable/enable sharing on one switch
2) added 3rd link in LAG which started carrying the traffic but the older 2nd port of LAG still exhibited same behavior.
-------
We then received an update that the issue is resolved. I am now not sure if 2nd or 3rd activity or some activity at any of the other nodes (Not Extreme switches but Application servers- yes there were few activities carried out on Application servers by other teams during the same time) solved the issue.
------

3) We then changed the configuration of LAG from L2 to L3_L4. Traffic pattern and nodes are under observation now.

Now comes the real question for two configurations ((sharing L2 as well L3_L4).

1) What will the behavior in case utilization of one of the ports in Load sharing touch 100%?
2) Will the extra traffic be dropped or shifted to the 2nd port?
3) How to check if the over utilized port in LAG is dropping traffic?

Your inputs are much awaited on this case.

Thanks
Harkanwal

[Manish_S]

@ Venko Velev

So I assume that after you did the mentioned changes you were able to literally do a load-balance on the links in the LAG group.

Regards,
Manish

[Venko_Velev]

Hello guys,

i can share some experience regarding this case. I have made a sharing group with 6x10G ports between a stack topology with 4 nodes and a X670 switch. The problem was that the first and the second ports were going at peak time up to flat 10G and the other ports at that time were loaded at 5G for example. My XOS version is 15.3.2.11.
In my case the solution was :
1. change the custom address-based algorithm from XOR to CRC-16
2. disable the sharing group and creating new one with address-algorithm custom

Output from the device:

configure sharing address-based custom hash-algorithm crc-16
disable sharing 30
enable sharing 30 grouping 30-35 algorithm address-based custom lacp

Hope this was useful !

Best regards,

Venko Velev

[PARTHIBAN_CHINN]

As far as I know .Multicast traffic will not be load shared in a lag .
It will always take one link in a lag.There were known PD's
may be this feature should have been implemented in new exos release but not till 15.3 I guess

[Drew_C]

Hi Paul,
There are other outside outlets for purchasing older gear that you can find by doing some Googling. You should be able to find an option in your region that carries this part and the optics. If not, your local Extreme Networks sales team may have some other recommendations for upgrade. Sorry I can't be of further help on this question right now.