Question on NIC Teaming for vMotion / VM vSwitch

[TonyJK]

Hi,

We are using vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Edition.

We also create separate vSwitch for Management / vMotion and VM.

Each vSwitch is assigned 2 NICs connected to different switch for redundancy.

We would like to know is it necessary for us to enable NIC Teaming for those vSwitches ?  Currently, we only enable NIC Teaming for VM vSwitch only.

Thanks

[npadmani]

Specially for your vMotion vSwitch, Multi NIC vMotion would be a good idea, see following KB

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200746...

[a_p_]

Please provide some more details about your current setup and the network environment, i.e. whether you are using the same or different physical switches for the different network traffic types. If you are using the same switches with different VLANs it may make sense to design the setup differently. It's also important to know the bandwith between the physical switches.

André

[CoolRam]

Nic teaming is concept where you have combining the multiple nic. So the only thing you need to configure how the load balancing is going happens between them and some policy .

You don't need to enable anything apart from above configuration .

[EugeneKash]

There's no enable/disable Teaming per se, some policy is always enabled, this policy dictates on how the traffic is handled between the adapters.

If you configure MGMT/VMOTION as (vmnic0/vmnic1) active/standby for MGMT and then the reversed, standby/active for vMotion, the teaming policy will not matter much, as the second adapter never kicks in, unless the first one had a failure. This configuration ensures the MGMT and vMotion traffic are never hitting the same adapter/switch, unless a failover occurred, which helps to predict the systems behavior and allow optimal operational levels for MGMT or vMotion services, equally important for a healthy environment.

[TonyJK]

Dear EugeneKash,

As mentioned in my question, we do have separate Virtual Switches for MGMT / VM and vMotion.

For the MGMT vSwitch, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic0 and nic4). nic0 and nic4 are connected to 2 different Psychical Switches.

Should we choose

1) Active / Standby

2) Both are Active

3) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - I just wonder do we really need NIC Teaming for MGMT

For VM vSwith, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic1 and nic5).  nic1 and nic5 are connected to 2 different Physical Switches

Should we choose

1) Active / Standby

2) Both are Active

3) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - From my understanding, a VM can only make use of 1 NIC, NIC Teaming is of no use for a particular VM.

For vMotion vSwitch, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic2 and nic6) with VLAN 10.  nic2 and nic6 are connected to 2 different Physical Switches. 

Should we choose

1) Both are Active

2) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - If there is only 1 VLAN, it seems that NIC Teaming is also of not much use unless we use 2 VLANs (Multi-NIC vMotion).  Is it correct ?

[npadmani · Accepted solution]

For vMotion vSwitch, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic2 and nic6) with VLAN 10.  nic2 and nic6 are connected to 2 different Physical Switches. 

Should we choose

1) Both are Active

2) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - If there is only 1 VLAN, it seems that NIC Teaming is also of not much use unless we use 2 VLANs (Multi-NIC vMotion).  Is it correct ?

If you want to use Multi-NIC vMotion, there's no need to have two different VLANs, all you need is following configuration

on your vMotion switch, please create two vmkernel port for vMotion with same VLAN ID, but NIC teaming as bellow

vMotion_1 - VLAN ID: 10

NIC Teaming

vmnic2 - active

vmnic6 - standby

vMotion_2 - VLAN ID: 10

vmnic6 - active

vmnic2 - standby

[TonyJK]

Yes, you are right.  There is only single VLAN required as mentioned in KB2007467.

However, it appears that it should be

vMotion_2 - VLAN ID: 10

NIC Teaming

vmnic6 - active

vmnic2 - standby

Do you have any other suggestion for those vSwitch for VM and MGMT ?

Thanks again

[npadmani]

For VM vSwith, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic1 and nic5).  nic1 and nic5 are connected to 2 different Physical Switches

Should we choose

1) Active / Standby

2) Both are Active

3) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - From my understanding, a VM can only make use of 1 NIC, NIC Teaming is of no use for a particular VM.

For this, I would go with Active-Active for sure.

Load balancing method -

Route based on Originating virtual port ID (IF physical switches don't support IEEE 802.3ad) - it's not about particular VM to send traffic out, it's about multiple VMs trying to send traffic out using those multiple VMNICs in team and load is being distributed.

IP hash - (If physical switches does have support of IEEE 802.3ad - please check with physical network admin to find out) - in this case, since IP hash is based upon source and destination IP, single VM might still make use of multiple VMNICs while talking to different targets.

or the MGMT vSwitch, we have 2 NICs assigned to it (nic0 and nic4). nic0 and nic4 are connected to 2 different Psychical Switches.

Should we choose

1) Active / Standby

2) Both are Active

3) Both are Active + NIC Teaming ?

Question - I just wonder do we really need NIC Teaming for MGMT

Nic teaming, either Active-Active or Active - standby wouldn't make much difference.

but it's always advisable to have two uplinks to avoid single point of failure for management network.

From vSphere HA perspective, I would like to have two uplink in team for management network so I can minimise chances of my HA going in host isolation response.