LAN Pin Groups

LAN Pin Groups

Cisco UCS uses LAN pin groups to pin Ethernet traffic from a vNIC on a server to an uplink Ethernet port or port channel on the fabric interconnect. You can use this pinning to manage the distribution of traffic from the servers.

To configure pinning for a server, you must include the LAN pin group in a vNIC policy. The vNIC policy is then included in the service profile assigned to that server. All traffic from the vNIC travels through the I/O module to the specified uplink Ethernet port.


Note

If you do not assign a pin group to a server interface through a vNIC policy, Cisco UCS Manager chooses an uplink Ethernet port or port channel for traffic from that server interface dynamically. This choice is not permanent. A different uplink Ethernet port or port channel may be used for traffic from that server interface after an interface flap or a server reboot.

If an uplink is part of a LAN pin group, the uplink is not necessarily reserved for only that LAN pin group. Other vNIC's policies that do not specify a LAN pin group can use the uplink as a dynamic uplink.

Configuring a LAN Pin Group

In a system with two fabric interconnects, you can associate the pin group with only one fabric interconnect or with both fabric interconnects.

Before you begin

Configure the ports and port channels with which you want to configure the pin group. You can only include ports and port channels configured as uplink ports in a LAN pin group.

Procedure

  Command or Action Purpose

Step 1

UCS-A# scope eth-uplink

Enters Ethernet uplink mode.

Step 2

UCS-A /eth-uplink # create pin-group pin-group-name

Creates an Ethernet (LAN) pin group with the specified name, and enters Ethernet uplink pin group mode.

Step 3

(Optional) UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group # set descr description

(Optional)

Provides a description for the pin group.

Note

 

If your description includes spaces, special characters, or punctuation, you must begin and end your description with quotation marks. The quotation marks will not appear in the description field of any show command output.

Step 4

(Optional) UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group # set target {a | b | dual} {port slot-num / port-num | port-channel port-num}

(Optional)

Sets the Ethernet pin target to the specified fabric and port, or fabric and port channel.

Step 5

UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group # commit-buffer

Commits the transaction to the system configuration.

Example

The following example creates a LAN pin group named pingroup54 on fabric A, provides a description for the pin group, sets the pin group target to port channel 28, and commits the transaction: 

UCS-A# scope eth-uplink
UCS-A /eth-uplink # create pin-group pingroup54
UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group* # set descr "This is my pin group #54"
UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group* # set target a port-channel 28
UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group* # commit-buffer
UCS-A /eth-uplink/pin-group #

What to do next

Include the pin group in a vNIC template.