Cisco Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch Troubleshooting Guide

Contributed by Joey Ristaino and Shankar Prasath, Cisco TAC
Engineers.
Jan 15, 2013

Introduction
 Prerequisites
      Requirements
      Components Used
      Conventions
 Commands
 Related Information

This document provides information and examples about Virtual Machine (VM) pinning both on the VMWare
vSwitch/Distributed Switch and on the Cisco Nexus 1000v. It is important to understand which uplink a VM
is using for communication, both for troubleshooting and design aspects.

Both the VMWare vSwitch/Distributed Switch and the Nexus 1000v support link aggregation with hashing as
well as pinning to a particular port. Starting with vSphere 5.1, the vDS supports LACP as well as other
methods, such as "Route Based IP Hash". The Cisco Nexus 1000v supports LACP and "Mode On"
port−channels.

Hard VM pinning to an uplink is known as "Route Based on Virtual Port ID" on the vSwitch and
"mac−pinning" on the Cisco Nexus 1000v. This document guides you through determining which uplink the
VM is using for communication.

Cisco recommends that you have knowledge of these topics:

VMWare ESX(i)

• 

Cisco Nexus 1000v

• 

This document is not restricted to specific software and hardware versions.

Refer to Cisco Technical Tips Conventions for more information on document conventions.