Can vMotion and Management(HA heartbeat) Network cross subnets(i.e. routed network) ?

[Dongjianhua]

Good Morning,

I have two question about vSphere network, could somebody answer me ? Thanks.

1. Can vMotion Network cross subnets ?

2. Can Management(HA heartbeat) Network cross subnets ?

[hypervisorboy]

In vSphere 5.x, it is possible to use static routes to allow migration with vMotion across subnets, although this is not officially supported. vSphere 6.0 introduces TCP/IPv4 and multiple netstack instances. vMotion uses TCP/IPv4 to acquire a netstack instance and default gateway to support vMotion across subnets, and this configuration must be used instead of static routing.

yes, Vmware supports vMotion and HA cross subnet from6.0.

Useful Kb while deploying this:- 

Deploying vCenter High Availability with network addresses in separate subnets

Thanks,

Karanveer

[Dongjianhua]

Thanks.

Now i know vMotion can cross subnets. However i still don't understand if Management(HA heartbeat) Network can cross subnets. For example,

192.168.1.1/24  esxi01

192.168.2.1/24  esxi02

192.168.3.1/24  VC01

If i put esxi01 and esxi02 in one vSphere HA cluster, and the VC is VC01, can this work ? Can vSphere HA heartbeat cross subnets ?

[Dongjianhua]

？？？

[tim_841 · Accepted solution]

Short answer: Yes

Better question: Why is it setup like that?

I've done this before temporarily as I was moving my VMs between old and new hardware/versions and had absolutely no problem doing so for the week I had it configured. I am pretty sure that the best practice is to have vCenter on the same subnet as your Hosts/Clusters. The main selling point of vCenter is Fault Tolerance, and every millisecond counts. Are you going to deploy a virtual router in this scenario, or are you relying on physical devices?

Please read:

http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vsan-sql-dvdstore-perf-wh...