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biggieinternati
Contributor
Contributor

ESX 5 Network Port Config

Hi All,

I have a question about the best way to setup the network ports on two new esx hosts i have.

each host comes with 6 ports (4 on and 2 on a PCIe card)

i have 1 internal network, 1 DMZ, and i need 1 iSCSI network and then management and vMotion.

What is the best way to set this up. I would like to have 8 NICS but this is not an option for me.

i was thinking of:

vSwitch0

Port Group VM internal:

NIC 0

NIC1

Port Group VM DMZ

NIC 2

NIC 3

Port Group : VMKERNAL

NIC 0

NIC 1

vSwitch1

Port Group iSCSI

NIC4

NIC5

Im sure this is not the best way to do it. should vMotion be segmented to iSCSI network? suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

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4 Replies
JedwardsUSVA
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would commit two for iSCSI and use VLANs to break up the other 4 into a single vSwitch with VLANs for your internal network, VMKernal (if you have a separate management network), DMZ, and VMotion.  While ideally you would have 2 dedicated to VMotion, you should be fine with this setup.  You'll get more use out of your NICs this way and better redundancy.  It's not like your using VMotion all day.

If you have Enterprise Plus and use the Distributed Switch, I would still go the same route with 4 uplinks on the Distributed Switch and keep your iSCSI in a vSwitch or separate Distributed Switch.

If you have 2 onboard NIC ports and a 4 port NIC.  In that case, place one of the onboards in each vSwitch.  Same goes for 3 x 2 ports.             

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

You should definitely be using VLANs to segregate traffic, and be able to use pNICs more efficiently.

The setup will also depend on if you have policy that forces you to have separate physical connections to your DMZ network.

I would separate iSCSI to its own as well.

I would also put mgmt on its own vSwitch with vMotion, but this can be somewhat flexible if you have to separate out you dmz network.

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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klvmwareadmins
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry for the late post but....

So when i create VMs then if i have a seperate iSCSI port group should i just put 2 nics on the VM and it will send all the iscsi traffic to that nic thats on the iscsi port group?

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logiboy123
Expert
Expert

How many physical switches are you using? Are you using VLAN tagging?

If the DMZ and Prod networks are segmented using VLANs and use the same physical switches then you can use 6 NIC ports easily.

If however you have seperate physical switches for Storage and DMZ, then you are going to need 8 NIC ports.

Regards,

Paul

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