Number of port groups and vlans per vSwitch

[rz1]

Hello all,

I'm looking for any insight or best practice with regard to the number of vlans that are being trunked on a vSwitch.  On our ESX servers, we have 6 physical NICs that are teamed (using ip hash).  These nics are the uplinks for the vSwitch that provides the virtual machine networks.   We are using VLAN Tagging (VST) and have created port groups for each Vlan ID.  So far, we have about 7 port groups for 7 different vlans.     I know the max is 512, but are there any considerations for adding more port groups/vlans that I may be missing?  (We're using vSphere 4.1)

Thank you...

[a_p_]

I don't see any issues with creating several port groups with different VLAN IDs.

What I would be more concerned about, is the NIC teaming. IP Hash can only balance Outoing traffic. Incoming traffic will most likely go through 1 pNIC. If you are running Enterprise Plus, you may want to take a look at the new Load Based Teaming policy in vSphere 4.1 (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1022590)

André

[Josh26 · Accepted solution]

The limit to the number of port groups per vCenter is 5000, but you don't sound like reaching it.

Really, for the number you've got (7) you're a pretty small network as far as standard implementations go, and you'll be fine.

I do think it's worth looking at whether you really expect to be utilising all six ports - it's rare for aggregation to achieve actual performance increases beyond two, and often "more" is not better.

LACP changes things somewhat, but it doesn't apply to many environments.

[AndreTheGiant]

If you use VLAN, it's normal and usual have a lot of portgroups.

On some customers I have more than 50 portgroups... So don't worry.

Remember in this case to add more ports on your vSwitch.

Andre