10000 Gb networking

[vmware_mike]

I am setting up a new vsphere cluster. The new boxes have 2 port 10000 gb Intel network cards (ixgbe driver) in them. My question is there any best practices using these cards for the port groups? They are set to full duplex. Does it matter what the guest OS is using? Currently most of my guests use the E1000 adapter. Are there any benefits to using VMXnet. I have read white papers on the two but is there any difference as it pertains to a host with (2) 10000 GB ports?

Thanks,

Mike

[MattG]

I would create a single vswitch and assign it both 10gb NICs. Use VLAN tagging to separate the port groups, and then assign the appropriate port groups to the vlans.

VMXNet3 is the latest paravirtualized network driver for ESX, I would use it as my default.

-MattG

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[RParker]

I agree with Matt that you should make it the default NIC, but I wouldn't proactively go back and change ALL the existing VM's. Read the release notes on vmxnet3, there are a few benefit, but if they don't apply to your VM's changing them will not make any difference, but for all new VM's I would use the latest NIC driver.

[vmware_mike]

That is the way I have it set up now. One Vswitch with multiple vlans. I have started to make my base server template have the new vmxnet3. Thanks