ESXi

Hello all,

I have a standalone ESXi 7.0 host on a Dell PowerEdge R540.
I also have a QNAP NAS that I use for hosting an NFS datastore.

The connection between the two is over the network, but I would like to connect them directly, so traffic doesn't traverse over the network.

I can add 2x10 GbE SFP+ transceivers to the NAS and a Dual Port 10GbE SFP+ PCIe Adapter to the Dell server.

My questions are:

1. Is connecting the ESXi host to the NAS directly doable to begin with?
2. How will I be able to assign a static IP to the new added NIC on the ESXi host? Will it show up in the IPv4 settings?
3. I can aggregate two ports on the NAS - can I also do that on the ESXi side? If not, I guess there's no reason for two transceivers on the server other than a spare?

Thanks!

Is connecting the ESXi host to the NAS directly doable to begin with?

Yes, should be. Still you can try to test it as I don't find any reference article with steps.

How will I be able to assign a static IP to the new added NIC on the ESXi host? Will it show up in the IPv4 settings?

You have to create a vmkernel portgroup in order to configure network on ESXi node. 

I can aggregate two ports on the NAS - can I also do that on the ESXi side? If not, I guess there's no reason for two transceivers on the server other than a spare?

In the virtual switch settings you can set a teaming policy for nics and make them active/active.