Are you testing NSX-T ECMP link failover or network convergence correctly?

 Hello friends!! In this post I am going to talk about NSX-T link failover testing, which we all do at the end of deployment. 

I recently got to know I was doing it all wrong. Though it was always giving correct results still that's not the recommended way of checking link failover or testing convergence NSX-T deployment.

Well you must be wondering what was I doing and what you should be avoiding. 

So let me spill the beans, I was testing convergence by disconnecting Edge node virtual NIC one by one, which makes that path down and traffic use to converge to other available path. However it is not the correct way of doing it. 

So if you are also using same test for making a path down, would suggest not to use it, instead bring down physical NIC card of the host and for complete edge node failure, put edge node in maintenance mode.  

I will guide you how to bring the physical NIC down for testing convergence.

To bring the NIC down we will use "esxcli" commands.

1) First you need to login on the ESXi Host using ssh where edgenode is hosted, and you need to run "esxcli network nic list" to list the network adaptors of the physical host.

2) Run command "esxcli network nic down -n vmnic0" to bring down first nic vmnic0 and then run list command to validate NIC is down.

3) To bring NIC back up again use command "esxcli network nic up -n vmnic0"  and list command to confirm the status.

You need to bring down one NIC as a time to test each path individually.

Finally to test complete edge node down situation please use NSX-T management console to put edge node in maintenance mode.

Navigate to System>>Fabric>>Nodes>>select edgenode>>Actions and select enter maintenance mode.

Repeat same steps for edge node two after you have completed testing with edge node 1 and its back online.

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