iscsi connection

[phillbl]

Hi,

I have the following setup in a server running ESXi 5.5:

vswitch0 management network with 2 nics active/standby

vswitch1, multiple port groups containing 3 nics

vswitch2, vmotion network 1 nic

We are switching off the fibre channel array and moving to ISCSI. In order do this in the past I have always as best practice used two ISCSI vmk ports.

to be able to do this with 6 nics and the above config would mean that I have to change some of the nics around.  My initial thinking was take two from the data (vswitch1) and use these but if one of the nic fails that leaves all the vms up the creek.

The esxi hosts are on a separate vlan to the rest of the corp network so I was thinking it could just move the vmotion to the management network. i know this is not best practice but i cant add any more nics to the server, the hosts are on a separate vlan and its not a big office.  The esxi host are well over spec so unless a host fails i cant really see an issue with having vmotion on the management network.  does anyone know of any reason why i should not do this?

Thanks

[a_p_]

From what I understand, Management, vMotion, and the VM networks are VLANs on the same switch(es)!? In this case I'd go ahead an use two vmnics for Management and vMotion (activ/standby), each within it's own subnet/VLAN, where one vmnic is the active one for the Management Network, and the other one is the active one for vMotion. This way you have 4 vmnics left, 2 for the VMs and two for iSCSI networking.

André