Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
Using Beacon Monitoring with a Port Group
You can enable beacon monitoring for a port group with the
SwitchFailoverBeaconVlanID option. If you select a port group with this option, ESX
Server broadcasts monitor beacons tagged with the VLAN ID of that port group. This
effectively limits the server to monitoring connection failures within the external
VLAN.
You can set the value of the SwitchFailoverBeaconVlanID in the Advanced Settings...
panel of the Management Interface. See Changing Advanced Settings on page 242
for details.
Note: The value of SwitchFailoverBeaconVlanID applies to all virtual switches. You
cannot choose a separate VLAN to monitor for each switch.
Configuring External Network Switches
• IP Load Balancing — With this load balancing mode enabled, ESX Server may
present duplicate MAC addresses to an external network switch. The external
switch should be set static 802.3ad (EtherChannel) mode to avoid external
routing errors.
• SwitchFailoverBeaconEtherType — This option sets the Ether type of monitor
beacons. You may wish to change this value so that your external switches
correctly handle monitor beacons.
• Beacon Monitoring with Multiple Switches — All external switches connected to
a virtual switch using beacon monitoring must be within the same network
broadcast domain.
• Spanning-Tree Protocol — If an adapter loses the physical connection to an
external switch that is using the Spanning-Tree Protocol, the switch may induce
a delay in reconnecting the link while it applies the protocol to check for
duplicate active connections. ESX Server can only detect that the link has been
physically restored, but not that the port is blocked by the Spanning-Tree check.
• Portfast Mode — You can use the Portfast mode to reduce errors caused by
Spanning-Tree checks. If you cannot disable the Spanning-Tree Protocol for an
external switch, configure the ports connected to the server to use Portfast
mode. This reduces Spanning-Tree delays, resulting in fewer false indications of
link failures.