Configuring networking for Application Clustering

[StageCoach20111]

Suppose I have clustering in my environment such as Microsoft Clustering, clustered SQL servers, clustered Oracle servers, etc.  These servers have heartbeat traffic.  I need to configure my virtual switches to accomodate this.  What is the best strategy?  Should I create separate port groups on my virtual switch and vLANs for heartbeat traffic between clustered SQL servers? This is vsphere 5.1 with two 10 GB uplinks from each host in my ESXi clusters and vDS is being used.

[TheVMinator]

Here is a good link:

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-mscs-gu...

[MKguy]

Handle this like any other new (but isolated in this case) subnet/VLAN:

Just configure this new VLAN on your physical switches and create a new port group on your existing vSwitches for this.

There is no need to consider a seperate vSwitch or playing with failover orders unless you really don't want the cluster internal traffic to share the same uplink with your public-facing traffic. You could think about that if you're pushing really bandwidth intensive replication between nodes through this network, but for just cluster heartbeating it's fine.

[StageCoach20111]

thanks again