ESXi 5.0 Load Balancing Test: Route based on the originating virtual port ID

ESXi 5.0 Load Balancing Test: Route based on the originating virtual port ID

Within ESXi 5.0, there are 4 methods of Load Balancing.  As stated in the help

Route based on the originating port ID
Select an uplink based on the virtual port where the traffic entered the standard switch.
Route based on ip hash
Select an uplink based on a hash of the source and destination IP addresses of each packet. For non-IP packets, whatever is at those offsets is used to compute the hash.

Route based on source MAC hash
Select an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet.
Use explicit failover order
Always use the highest order uplink from the list of Active adapters that passes failover detection criteria. This test is to review what "Route based on the originating port ID" does and how it perform the required traffic load balancing.



Below is my setup.
6 XP virtual machines connected to 2 port groups into vSwitch1.  3 pNIC connected to vSwitch1.

In the vSwitch NIC Teaming Setup

I found a command in ESXi to monitor the vmnic and virtual machine relationship.  The command is "esxtop" in ssh shell follow by "n".

I power up my 6 XP virtual machines in order.  TEST_XP01, follow by TEST_XP02... till TEST_XP06.

Below is the result in esxtop

When TEST_XP01 powered up, it uses vmnic1.

When TEST_XP02 powered up, it uses vmnic2.

When TEST_XP03 powered up, it uses vmnic3.

When TEST_XP04 powered up, it uses vmnic1.

When TEST_XP05 powered up, it uses vmnic2.

When TEST_XP06 powered up, it uses vmnic3.

I reversed the vmnic order in the NIC Teaming from vmnic3 to vmnic1.

The esxtop immediatly reflect the changes.

Conclusion

In this test, "Route based on the originating virtual port ID" it shows that the assignment of vmnic to virtual machine depends on the sequence of powering up the virtual machine.  Port Group or vlans does not affect the assignment.  In addition, the Order of the vmnic position in the Active Adapters plays a important roles on the sequence of virtual machine and the changes takes immediate effect. 

http://thomaslowblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/esxi-50-load-balancing-test-route-based.html