Network Design help needed

[StudentJT]

Hi All,

Thanks for any help, in advance.

I am looking to reconfigure our current infrastructure setup. I would like to set up vlan port groups for individual departments in our company and give them appropriate access.

I would also like to use vmotion to handle live migration between hosts as resources demand while keeping them in the same vlan.

Some of these vlans will be for our sales department to run demos and will therefore have need for the VMs to be accessible outside the firewall, hence the vlan setup.

I will attach a possible setup and am looking for any and all feedback. Thank you!

P.S. the red line indicates VMotion

[kac2]

check out my blog post of vSphere NIC setup. it should answer most of the questions you have about design and port groups

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/vsphere-host-nic-configuration.html

[StudentJT]

Hi,

Thanks that is useful. I do have a follow up question though for you. We haven't purchased vmotion yet, just standard licenses. So I might be missing something, then again, maybe not.

So, I would like to set up different vnics per host, and let each host manage that. I will only be dealing with 3 physical nics, which I would like to then have broken further into 3 vNics. these physical will then go to my switch, and using the taging in the frame header, I would like the switch to send the information on to the correct vlan.

is this possible?

thanks for you help!

[kac2]

How many physical hosts do you have?

how many physical NICs do you have on each host?

Do you have a SAN or are you doing local storage? you know you dont have HA capability with local storage.

If you only have 3 NICs I would try 2 different things. (btw, how in the world do you only have 3 NICs? that's an odd number)

1. vSwitch 0 = vmnic0 = Service Console / Management

2. vSwitch 1 = vmnic1 = VM Network Traffic

3. vSwitch 2 = vmnic2 = iSCSI traffic

On your physical switch, set vmnic1 to be a trunk port and specify the VLANs that will be using.

When you define the port groups on vSwitch 1, specify the VLAN you want to use.

Start putting VMs into port groups

2nd option

1. vSwitch0 = vmnic0,1,&2. setup trunking for all 3 links and specify the VLAN on all port groups. You will get more VM traffic out this way with less likelihood of bottleneck, but it's not "best practice".

best practice is to have Service Console, VM Network, iSCSI, etc all on different VLANs to separate that traffic

let me know if you have anymore questions and please remember to award points for helpful or correct answers

Kendrick Coleman

www.kendrickcoleman.com<http://www.kendrickcoleman.com>;

twitter: @KendrickColeman

[StudentJT]

Thanks!

Right off the bat, I have been looking for points to

give, but I think I need to change the thread type. I cant find where

to award points or I would have, you have been helpful.

I think, in my initial post, since I by accident tried to upload a forbidden file type, it didnt mark the thread as a question to award points. I will make a new thread and link to it.

[StudentJT]

continued here

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1515870#1515870