Trying to get proper VLANs configured for Hyper-V MPIO to FreeNAS

[mikesoultanian]

For some reason my network admin and I are having a hell of a time trying to get FreeNAS and MPIO to work, but it's really more to do with the VLAN configuration. We have a SuperMicro frame with 4 blades that house our VM nodes. Into the frame is a dual trunked 10Gb ethernet which is teamed in each node and so far that is working - in other words, our hyper-v cluster is operating and talks to the rest of the network. We currently have one VLAN (100) configured with two IPs (10.100.97.x and 10.100.98.x - where x is the node #) and the FreeNAS box has a dual 10Gb NIC that has its IPs set to 10.100.97.15 and 10.100.98.15 - we connect to the FreeNAS box via iSCSI.

Right now all the network connections going to/from the FreeNAS box are talking over VLAN 100, and if I've read correctly, just having multiple IPs in different subnets on the same NIC is not ideal (or even correct?) for MPIO - it seems like what I want to have is IPs on different networks living on their own VLAN. Btw, I didn't set all of this up, I'm just trying to fix it (if it's actually broken).

So, coming back to the setup - trunked VLANs into the frame, and then it goes through the 10Gb switch and untagged VLAN 100 out of the switch to the FreeNAS box - that works and it's been talking to the FreeNAS box. What we've been trying to do now is set up two new VLANs (11 and 12), create new virtual NICs on the frame nodes with separate IPs (10.100.11.x and 10.100.12.x, on VLANs 11 and 12 respectively) and have those talk to two new IPs on the FreeNAS box (10.100.11.10 and 10.100.12.10). For some odd reason, though, we can't ping the FreeNAS box when we try and utilize those two new VLANs (11 and 12), and we're stumped.

Is there something that we're missing? I'm assuming that the FreeNAS box does in-fact want to see untagged traffic, right? I'm still thinking this is a network configuration issue that we're missing, but we were spending hours on it, and we even verified that the VLANs to/from the frame's nodes were working as we could ping other computers (also connected through the 10Gb switch) through those VLANs, so it's either we have the ports leading to the FreeNAS box misconfigured or FreeNAS box is expecting different type of traffic. The weird part is my network admin mirrored the configuration we're using for the 100 VLAN (except using VLANs 11 and 12 instead), but it still won't work.

I hope that isn't horribly confusing, but it's got us stumped and I was hoping someone might have some insight for us...

thanks!
Mike

 

[dlavigne]

Were you able to figure this out?

 

[mikesoultanian]

Unfortunately, no. I was still hoping to get some input on how to get this resolved.

Do we need to set the VLANs on the box, or should we untag it at the switch?

 

[mikesoultanian]

I think the cause might be due to some very strange VLAN issues - for the life of me I couldn't get communication to happen over the VLANs I configured, but I made some new VLANs and I was able to make it work. So I think I might be good. I'll keep testing it in my VM environment and if I run into any snags I'll post it here.

Thanks!

 

[mikesoultanian]

So just to add to this - I have no idea how to configure iSCSI on the FreeNAS side - am I supposed to make two separate portals? Am I supposed to make one portal that has both networks? Is there documentation anywhere on how to do this?

 

[dlavigne]

Does the MPIO example in http://doc.freenas.org/11/sharing.html#portals answer your question?

 

[mikesoultanian]

Does the MPIO example in http://doc.freenas.org/11/sharing.html#portals answer your question?

After reading a bunch of threads I noticed that you want to have two NICs on a portal for MPIO to work, but this is not clear in the documentation. It would be helpful if this was a little bit more explicit in the documentation as to how to configure MPIO in FreeNAS - i.e. "to enable the use of MPIO, you should configure two NICs (preferably on different networks) per portal". Yes, there is an example that says to put two NICs per portal, but the example doesn't directly follow the generally vague MPIO paragraph so you're not really sure if it's part of the MPIO configuration or just general portal configuration.

 

[dlavigne]

After reading a bunch of threads I noticed that you want to have two NICs on a portal for MPIO to work, but this is not clear in the documentation. It would be helpful if this was a little bit more explicit in the documentation as to how to configure MPIO in FreeNAS - i.e. "to enable the use of MPIO, you should configure two NICs (preferably on different networks) per portal". Yes, there is an example that says to put two NICs per portal, but the example doesn't directly follow the generally vague MPIO paragraph so you're not really sure if it's part of the MPIO configuration or just general portal configuration.

Thanks! We'll clarify that in the Guide.