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biggieinternati
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 5 Host pNIC config

Hi all,

I have a client with four ESXi 5 hosts in a cluster. each host has 8 pNICS. Each host has about 7 VM guests. FC shared storage in place.

Currently on each host they only have one vSwitch configured. the vSwitch is set for VM port group and mamagement vmkernal. only four of ht pNICs are used and default load balancing is used (based on virtual port ID with no etherchannel on switch side)

I can not have any down time on the running VMs'. the management vmkernal only used two of the NICS in active passive. and the VM port group uses all four NICS as active.

Does this setup need to be changed to follow best practice> two nics for management and HA setup active/passive and then another vSwitch for VM portgroup. Or does the current setup give me the desired redundancy. the NICs go into redundant switches.

Also they ahve a DR site with NFS storage. they dont have a seperate isolated subnet for storage. how can i sell them on this? Please go over benefits. Also they dont ahve the in house expertise to set this up and maintain it. is it even worth it for them,

thanks in advance.

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Does this setup need to be changed to follow best practice> two nics for management and HA setup active/passive and then another vSwitch for VM portgroup. Or does the current setup give me the desired redundancy. the NICs go into redundant switches.

Could be fine. But what about your vMotion interface?

Also they ahve a DR site with NFS storage. they dont have a seperate isolated subnet for storage. how can i sell them on this? Please go over benefits. Also they dont ahve the in house expertise to set this up and maintain it. is it even worth it for them,

Use at least a logical different network, if possibile.

Andre | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

biggieinternational wrote:

Does this setup need to be changed to follow best practice> two nics for management and HA setup active/passive and then another vSwitch for VM portgroup. Or does the current setup give me the desired redundancy.

The setup gives correct redundancy for management and HA, however if you have more physical NIC ports available you could add them to the existing vSwitch and bind the VM portgroups to these and set "unused" for the two vmnics used by the Vmkernel. In that way you have more separation of the traffic.

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
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