nic teaming setup help needed

[wb2]

I currently am using esxi 4 with 2 nics for managment, 2 nics for vmotion, 3 nics for iscsi traffic(software iscsi), 3 nics for LAN traffic. I haven't touched anything in the NIC TEAMING tabs under the properties of any port groups of vmkernel ports. Should I? What am I currently accomplishing with my setup? I assume VMware will use up all the available bandwidth across the 3 nics for LAN or ISCSI switches. Or do I need to make some changes?

[weinstein5]

There are three types of "load balaning" that the vmkernel will do when you have NIC teaming -Virtual Port based, IP Hash based and MAC Address based -

1. Virtual Port Based - the vmkernel chooses a physical NIC based on thevirtual port the virtual NIC connects to - so if you multiple VMs, SC ports, VMkernel ports connected to the vSwitch the traffic will be distributed across the connected physical ports - but if you have fewer virtual NICs than physical NICs one or more of those ports will not be used. This works with any physical network switch and is the default load balancing method.

2. IP Hash Based - the vmkernel examines every packet passing through the vSwitch and based on originating and destination IP addresses of the packet the vmkernel will choose the physical NIC to send the traffic out - so a VM/SC/vmkernel port's traffic can go out any of the physical NICs attached to the vSwitch as long as they are going to multiple IP addresses. This only works with a physical switch that is enabled for Link Aggregation Control Protocol

3. MAC Address based - is similar to Virtual Port Based but the physical NIC is chosen based on the originaing MAC address.

So to answer your questions no ESX will not use all available bandwidth for 4.1 this changes you have much better control over the bandwidth being used by the VMs and other virtual ports.

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[wb2]

I'm not sure I understand 100% yet.

If I leave my vswitch with 3 physical adapters, 1 single vmkernal port and 1 single virtual machine port group and don't configure teaming, how will it perform/act with 10 virtual machines running on it? Then, also, how will traffic perform/act if I turn on NIC Teaming with Load Balancing based on virtual port?

Or am I suppose to add multiple VMkernal ports and/or multiple Virtual Machine Network ports. Do I set teaming on the VMkernel port of the Virtual Machine Network ports? I'm a bit lost.