Best Practices for NIC configuration

[sunny101]

We are running Vsphere Enterprise Edition and are migrating from HP DL380 G8 to Gen9 servers. Each Gen9 server has 12 NIC ports and I would like to know what is the best practices to utilize these NIC ports on ESXi servers?Currently we have 1Gbe connectivity but moving forward (after year or two) we will establish 10Gbe connection.Also existing 10 NICs of each  HP DL380 G8 server are configured like 2 for MGMT, 2 for vMotion, 2 for backup and 4 for prod traffic.Will appreciate your response.

[Madmax01]

Hello,

Just Questions.  how much Onboard Connections and how much Additional Cards?  Just as it would be good to cross Connections through different Cards.  So means in worst case if 1 Card dies - that traffic still running through the 2nd Port etc,.....

Best regards

Max

[sunny101]

there are 2 network feeds 2 FC adaptors on each server. We will be using 2 NIC's for each component to make sure there is HA. all the time

[DeepakNegi420]

Few questions mate?

1- How do you take VM backups? snapshot level or file level?

2- Are you going to use NFS in your environment?

[Ribcap]

Your configuration look OK to me assuming the redundant ports for each of your vSwitches are not on the same physical card.  Are you using Standard switches or Distributed switches?  The reason I ask is that once you upgrade to the 10 gig adapaters you'll be limited (VMware Maximum) to 8 x 10GB ports.  It may be in your best interest to use DVS to take advantage of NetIOC.

Jamie

[Jimmy15]

It looks balanced to me, the only thing to add dedicate ports if iSCSI in place.

Regards

Pankaj

[sunny101]

We are currently using standard switches however we plan to use distributed switches once 10 GbE infrastructure is ready. Since I have 12 NICs , is it best practices to leverage all these ports. e,g: what is the point to use 6 NICs for prodcution traffic when  1 GbE is bottle neck?