How do I get redundency for vmotion multiple vmkernels?

[gheywood]

Hello,

I have an equallogic SAN on a vSphere host. The connection is configured as follows:

vSwitch1

*************************

- Service Console 2

- iSCSI4

- iSCSI3

- iSCSI2

- iSCSI2

-

---

vmnic4

-

---

vmnic5

**************************

The iSCSI1...4 are all VMK’s and each is bound to ONE NIC (either 4, or 5). If I can only enable vmotion on one VMK, how do I get redundancy?

I suppose dedicated NIC’s for vmotion is an option(?), but that seems like an inefficient approach..

[hstagner · Accepted solution]

Hello Gheywood,

Actually, dedicating two nics (teamed) for Vmotion redundancy is the best choice if possible. If you cannot do that, then you should not put your VMotion traffic on the same NIC team as your iSCSI traffic. You should have dedicated NICs / Network (physically separate if possible) for iSCSI.

If you must combine a VMotion port group with another port group, then the Service Console (or management network in ESXi's case) is usually a good choice.

Unless you are using Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) and 10Gbe, it is not uncommmon to see 10 NICs in an ESX host that utilizes IP Storage. I hope this helps.

Don't forget to mark this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

VCP3, VCP4

[gheywood]

Thanks, that is what I will do!

Cheers

Greg