Why vmkernel port for vmotion or iscsi services ?

[santosh42]

Hi,

Just a quick question.

I was trying to understand - why we need to have a vmkernel port when we want to use features like vmotion or iscsi.

Why not use them with a service console port or a vm management traffic port.

Any special reason.

Thanks

[AWo]

There are only two kinds of ports: Virtual Machine and VMkernel and the latter one is used for iSCSI, vMotion and management. That a vmkernel has to be used is by design. Separation of guest and management traffic.

Does that answer your question?

AWo

[weinstein5]

and to add with vSphere 5 there is no longer an ESX version so there is no longer a Service Console port - 

[santosh42]

Thanks for your replies.

So i assume that in cos based ESX servers, the basic reason for such a design is to isolate the VM traffic from iscsi/vmotion traffic.

[schepp · Accepted solution]

Yes. You don't really want all that traffic produced by DRS & vMotion actions in your productive (maybe time critical) network.

Regards