Hi,
My setup have the following components:
3 Hosts with 4 NICs for each host
1 NAS storage connected to the hosts using iSCSI and NFS
1 switch with 1GB ports speed
2 switches with 100MB ports speed
I have a limitation to connect only 2 NICs from each host to the 1GB switch, so what is the best design for the network here.
Currently I'm doing it like this:
NIC1 -> 1GB Ethernet for the storage (iSCSI and NFS)
NIC2 -> 1GB Ethernet for the VM network and Management traffic
NIC3 -> 100MB Ethernet for the vMotion
Should I add NIC4 -> 100MB Ethernet and bing it with NIC1 for storage network redundancy?
Is NIC3 -> 100MB Ethernet enough for vMotion? (keep in mind that I have DRS enabled and set to Automatic)
Is it better to move the Management traffic to NIC3 -> 100MB Ethernet and keep VM network and vMotion on NIC2 -> 1GB Ethernet?
what do you suggest?
Thanks in advance folk,
Hi,
Take a look at the graphic enclosed in the link - http://virtualpicasso.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/vsphere-ha-clustering-best-practices-nice-and-simple-...
is taken from HA best practices so you'll be fine with 2 nic's. Key is specify the active nic for each port group to be the alternative to the other port group eg
vmnic0 be the active for mgmt and vmnic1 for vmotion and opposite standby's.
Many tx
My concern is the speed - 100 MB will work but it is not best practice - vmotion and management should be 1 GB - for availablility you should have a stanby or configur in an active/active fashion for managemnet, vmotion, storage and vmotiob traffic - so if possible I would add 1 GB ports -
If you have two onboard nics and you are using a additional nics. I would configure it like this
nic0 onboard nic2 additional card.
I would create these nics in a nic team for both Management and vmotion. Nic 0 active adapter for management nic2 as standby. Nic 2 Active for Vmotion and nic 0 as standby. You create two port groups management and vmotion port group and add the nics.
This would give network redundancy at the NIC level as well better utilization of bandwidth. I recommend using 1 gig cards for both vmotion.
