Optimal Networking for 4 ports ESXi?

[crescendas]

If you have 4 ports on your ESXi server, how will you configure it for optimal performance as first priority, reliability as second priority and security as last priority? My current setup is:

• vSwitch0
  • VM Networking - vmnic0/vmnic1 - Active/Active
  • Management - vmnic0/vmnic1 - Active/Active
• vSwitch1
  • iSCSI1 - vmnic2/vmnic3 - Active/Unused
  • iSCSI2 - vmnic2/vmnic3 - Unused/Active
  • vMotion - vmnic3 - Active

btw, will vMotion be affected if I configure jumbo frame on vmnic3 used by vMotion, which is also used by iSCSI?

[harshahosur81]

Assuming that you have vlan segregation I would do it this way

vSwitch0

VMnetworking - vmnic0 - active vmnic1-standby

Mgmt Traffic / Vmotion - vmnic1 - active vmnic0 - standby

vSwitch1

iSCSI1 - vmnic2

iSCSI2 - vmnic3.

In your scenario yout iSCSI traffic if transmitted via vmnic3 which is being shared by vMotion can be a constraint for performance. The above config will give you true multi pathing for iSCSI storage and vMotion wont be affected by storage traffic if there is contention.

[crescendas]

Thanks for sharing.

Since Mgmt has low traffic and vMotion has no traffic unless triggered, won't vmnic1 be idling most of the time? Any issue with teaming both NICs (active/active instead of active/standby) for vSwitch0 in order to optimize VM networking performance?

btw, if vmnic0 and vmnic1 is a dual Intel ethernet card, and vmnic2 and vmnic3 is an dual broadcom ethernet card. Any issue with teaming 2 NICs of difference manufacturer? (team vmnic0-vmnic2 for vSwitch0 and vmnic1-vmnic3 for vSwitch1 instead of vmnic0-vmnic1 for vSwitch0 and vmnic2-vmnic3 for vSwitch1)

This arrangement of teaming 2 separated ethernet card will improve reliability as in case an ethernet card failed, the other teamed NIC from another separated ethernet card will help to ensure that the network is still functional.

[krowczynski]

HI,

have a look at this post here.

http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/vsphere-host-nic-design-6-nics.html

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vs...

It would be good if you could buy two more nics.

[crescendas]

I have another post that mentioned 6 nics too: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1832494#1832494

Unfortunately, I only have 4 NICs on this ESXi host, so the optimal 6 ports configuration is out for now.

[crescendas]

I found this article that shows that Jumbo Frame works with vMotion and even improve it's performance. However, the improvement with Jumbo Frame, even with iSCSI is bare minimum: http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2011/01/24/jumbo-frames-comparison-testing-with-ip-storage-and-v...

[chriswahl]

crescendas wrote:

Any issue with teaming 2 NICs of difference manufacturer? (team vmnic0-vmnic2 for vSwitch0 and vmnic1-vmnic3 for vSwitch1 instead of vmnic0-vmnic1 for vSwitch0 and vmnic2-vmnic3 for vSwitch1)

This arrangement of teaming 2 separated ethernet card will improve reliability as in case an ethernet card failed, the other teamed NIC from another separated ethernet card will help to ensure that the network is still functional.

No issue, this is a best practice to avoid single points of failure.