Multiple VM's Connected To Multiple Subnets

[deatho01]

Hi All,

I am currently looking into virtualisation of a service that we provide our clients using physical boxes currently. Basically the remote server is deployed within the client network and performs data collections. This data is then aggregated and forwarded to common infrastructure within our network. As you can appreciate the cost of rendering a physical box for this is expensive compared to the cost of provisioning a VM capable of performing the same task. In terms of CPU, Memory and storage VMware clearly is suitable. From a network view point I am not convinced.

Currently there are 35 of these servers that participate in 26 different subnets.

From reading http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/network_segmentation.pdf document I see that there is support for a fully collapsed trust zone using a virtual firewall and virtual switches. This looks attractive, however the diagram (page 6) shows that each virtual switch is connected to a physical NIC. From this diagram I am concerned that we will need 26 NIC's to facilitate the 26 subnets.

Is this the case or is there something I am missing here?

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - If you are planning to aggregate back to the VM it will be the number of virtual NICs that the VM can support and for ESX 4.0 is 10 virtual NICs - so your can have a VM connect to 10 different network segments/vLANs -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[jbruelasdgo]

use VLANs, you can have a lot of networks with just a physical NIC!!

take a look at this documents, I hope they guide you in the right direction

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

regards

Jose Ruelas

P.S. and yes, a virtual machine can have up to 10 NICs in vSphere (ESX 4)

[deatho01]

Thanks for the responses. Looks like the VLAN option will suit our needs.