Network questions: Managment Network, NIC allocation and High Availability

[munkyman]

The background:

Brand new vSphere Essentials Plus 5.5 U2 installation on two host servers that will be configured with the High Availability solution.  vCenter Server is going to be a VM on the host servers, along with only 3 other VMs.

Each server has 2x 10Gb and 2x 1Gb NICs for a total of 4 NICs per server.  My plan was to directly connect 1x 10Gb NIC on each server for use for the HA solution and use 1x 1Gb NIC on each server to connect to the business network.  I had not considered the required Management Network.

I have 2 questions:

1. Can the management network NIC be the same as the one being used for the business network?  My plan was to install vSphere Client on a laptop that exists on the business network for ease of access.  The business network will continuously be reading/writing to the VMs running the business applications but there is plenty of bandwidth to spare.  Is there anything special about the management network or is it just the means to connect the vSphere Client to vCenter server for system management tasks?
2. What kind of NIC fault tolerance is available?  I was only considering using 1 of each type of NIC, but since I have the spares I might as well use them.  If NIC FT is available, do I configure the pairs with the same IP address and the system handles the fail overs?

Thank you for your help.

[BenLiebowitz]

If this helps, in my production environment, each host has two 10gb NICs and they are shared for Mgmt, vMotion AND VM Network traffic. 

The ports need to be configured properly on the switch side to TRUNK for all the vLANS necessary, and then you just set the VLAN ID in the vSwitch portgroups, etc. 

Hope this helps!

[marcelo_soares]

Some clarification on this:

- You CAN use the same nic (1Gbit) for VMtrafic and also for Management Traffic, no problem, but you should at least separate them in different VLANs (VMware recommendation);

- If you use 2 nics as uplinks for your vSwitches, they will by default be active/active nics,meaning you have automatic "FT" on them. You can use 2 x 1Gbit nics to accomplish that and use both management and VM traffic over there.

- I didn't understood the HA use you wantto give to the 10GBit nics. vSPhere HA traffic goes over the Management Network.

Physical nics in vSphere have no IP addresses, so you may be having some confusion here. When you assign the ESXi an IP, it is assigned to a vmkernel interface that goes attached toa vSswitch, and then this vSwitch is attached to one or more physical nics, as uplinks.

If I were you, I would build:

- 1 vSwitch with 2x1Gbit nics for management, vmotion(if needed), HA traffic

- 1 vSwitch with 2x10Gbit nics for VM traffic

You can buid up this scenario,but this way it will be simple and will work.

Hope this helps.

Marcelo

[munkyman]

Thank you, Marcelo and Ben.

I definitely have to go through the vSphere Networking manual to really get a grasp of what is going on.  This is my first implementation of vSphere and I am not usually in an IT role, I am an Automation/Controls System Engineer.

My thought for the 10Gb NICs handling the infrastructure network (vMotion, HA) was that I assumed that type of infrastructure communication would require the greater bandwidth compared to the regular management network and VM traffic with the production network.  So the 1Gb would handle the easy stuff and the 10Gb would do the heavy lifting.  But if HA uses the management network and not an infrastructure network, then your recommendation makes sense.  The normal network load on the existing physical servers is handled by 1Gb NICs and it never has a problem with being underpowered.

The VMware rep told me to do the direct connection between the hosts' 10Gb NICs for the HA functionality.  But if I need that same network to connect with the Client, then it will need to go to a physical switch for wider access.  My concern is broadcasting all of the vMotion and HA traffic over the entire network - I don't think the network would enjoy that.

For reference, these servers will be operating in a manufacturing environment where there is a decent amount of traffic between PLCs, SCADA terminals, the historian server, etc.  I need to isolate traffic as much as possible.

I'll read more about virtual networking and try to come up with some better questions to help clarify my needs.

Thank you for the help.

[marcelo_soares]

About the broadcast of vMotion, you are right - that's why you need to, at least, separate the management network and vmotion network on VLANs.