Cisco Systems N5KC5596TFA manual Guidelines and Limitations for Port Channel Configuration

Configuring Port Channels

Guidelines and Limitations for Port Channel Configuration

Note

Note

channels. For information on port channel configuration limits, see the Verified Scalability document for your platform. For more information about load balancing, see Load Balancing Using Port Channels, on page 48.

Cisco NX-OS does not support Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) for port channels.

A port channel bundles individual links into a channel group to create a single logical link that provides the aggregate bandwidth of several physical links. If a member port within a port channel fails, traffic previously carried over the failed link switches to the remaining member ports within the port channel.

Each port can be in only one port channel. All the ports in an port channel must be compatible; they must use the same speed and operate in full-duplex mode. When you are running static port channels, without LACP, the individual links are all in the on channel mode; you cannot change this mode without enabling LACP.

You cannot change the mode from ON to Active or from ON to Passive.

You can create a port channel directly by creating the port-channel interface, or you can create a channel group that acts to aggregate individual ports into a bundle. When you associate an interface with a channel group, Cisco NX-OS creates a matching port channel automatically if the port channel does not already exist. You can also create the port channel first. In this instance, Cisco NX-OS creates an empty channel group with the same channel number as the port channel and takes the default configuration.

Note A port channel is operationally up when at least one of the member ports is up and that port’s status is channeling. The port channel is operationally down when all member ports are operationally down.

Guidelines and Limitations for Port Channel Configuration

Port channels can be configured in one of two ways: either in global configuration mode or in switch profile mode. Consider the following guidelines and limitations when configuring port channels via the configuration synchronization feature in Cisco NX-OS:

•Once a port channel is configured using switch profile mode, it cannot be configured using global configuration (config terminal) mode.

Note Several port channel sub-commands are not configurable in switch profile mode. These commands can be configured from global configuration mode even if the port channel is created and configured in switch profile mode.

For example, the following command can only be configured in global configuration mode:

switchport private-vlan association trunk primary-vlansecondary-vlan

•Shutdown and no shutdown can be configured in either global configuration mode or switch profile mode.

	Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide, Release 5.2(1)N1(1)
46	78-26881-OL