Quad port NIC in ESXi 5

[WHISKEYTANG0F0X]

Good Evening,

Can anyone offer suggestions on the best way to utilize a quad port GB NIC in ESXi 5? This is in addition to the 2 onboard Broadcom GB Nics on the PE 2950, hosting 5 Windows 2008R2 servers, I understand it might be best practice to isolate the management network to it's own NIC for future VSphere operations? The 6 GB ports will be connected to two physical GB switches. Is there any posts that describe a similar setup?

There are no problems with the two already in operation, I would just like to understand the best way to utilize the 4 that are not yet configured. I have 2 networks; the 192.168.x common domain subnet, and the backup 10.10.10..x network that is soley used for backups, and inter-server communication where possible.

Thanks in advance, I'm new at this.

Brad

[rickardnobel]

Do you use vMotion in your setup today? Are you using any network based storage (iSCSI or NFS)?

Do you have any VLANs defined in your physical switches today?

[a_p_]

As mentioned by rickardnobel it really depends on your needs. One thing you may consider in any case, is to make sure each vSwitch has at least one uplink from each of the network adapters connected, so in case of an adapter failure you still have connectivity.

Isolating management traffic is for security reasons. With a flat network like yours however, this might not be necessary!?

André

[Josh26]

This is definitely the most FAQ on this forum - I can see it asked several times on this one page.

Have a read around, there is an absolute tonne of good advise.