[vSphere 4.1] vMotion network Load balancing and Failover

[SubnetJO]

GoodMorning Everybody.

I have some doubts about network configuration for vMotion in vSphere 4.1

I know I can enable only one VMkernel portgroup for vMotion on one host, but I can have this portgroup in a vSwitch with two or more phisical NIC attached.

Currently I managed to have a vSwtich with vMotion and Management portgroups wth two nics (please see attached file).

Both nics work fine with failover for both portgroups.

I would like to move to a vSwitch with more nics and I have some doubts.

It seems I could configure it... but is load balancing for vMotion supported on vSphere 4.1?

And also, having the vMotion protgroup in a switch with multple NICs,is there a way to check which phisical nic is currently being used by vMotion?

I'm currently running an Enterprise license.

Thank you all for your help.

[Sreejesh_D]

It seems I could configure it... but is load balancing for vMotion supported on vSphere 4.1?

>>> yes, It is supported. you can assign the required pNICS for vMotion in the properties of portgroup from "NIC Teaming" tab. And load balancing can be set by selecting the appropriate policy.

And also, having the vMotion protgroup in a switch with multiple NICs,is there a way to check which physical nic is currently being used by vMotion?

>>> we can achieve this with the command esxtop.

Run the command esxtop from the console and press n. You can see the vmkernel nic name and the associated pNIC.

   PORT-ID              USED-BY  TEAM-PNIC DNAME              PKTTX/s  MbTX/s

  16777217           Management        n/a vSwitch0              0.00    0.00

  16777218               vmnic0          - vSwitch0             44.21    0.44

  16777219                 vmk0     vmnic0 vSwitch0             12.72    0.42

[joshodgers]

Ideally set ESXi Management VMKernel to Active on vmNICX and Standby on vmNICY, and the VMKernel for vMotion to Active on vmNICY and Standby on vmNICX.

Then you wont have any contention unless you have a cable / NIC or physical switch failure.

[SubnetJO]

Sure I have done so!

I have set "Management" with vmnic0 as active and vmnic1 as standby, and set "vMotion" just the opposite, of course.

Doing so I have a quite good failover beheaviour, just a long fail back from the vmnic1 failure (6/7 pings lost).

But what about if I want load balancing too?

I suppose that this configuration leads to each PG using a different NIC, with each nic performing backup for the other.

But if vMotion uses all the bandwith available for vmnic1 and there is free bandwith on vmnic0, vMotion will simply leave vmnic0 unused.

Am I wrong?

What to configure to add and verify tha load balancing feature?

Thanks for you answer

[joshodgers · Accepted solution]

vMotion for pre vSphere 5 does not support Multi-NIC, in vSphere 5 you can configure multiple VMKernel's enable vMotion and select different Active NICs and load balance across the two vmNICs, but sadly not in vSphere 4.x

For ESXi management, if you set Active on both NICs, you wont get any benefit over Active/Standby as it will only use on vmNIC unless there is a failure anyway.. but 1 vmNIC is enough as bandwidth is generally not an issue for ESXi management alone.

So the answer: Upgrade to vSphere 5 for multi-nic vMotion, and dont worry about ESXi management as one active NIC is more than enough bandwidth,

Here is a YouTube on configuring Multi-NIC vMotion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7njBRF2N0Z8

[SubnetJO]

Sorry for the late.

I think that, in case o a vMotion:

- the vPort ID is always the same (vMotion portgroup)

- the mac address is always the same (the one from the host?)

- the source IP address is always the same (vMotoin portgroup), and in a not so large environmet as mine, seldoms change the receiving IP address (vMotion portgroup on the receiving host)

If I'm right, the only configuration that does make sense in this case seems to be load balancing using a fixed order.

The fixed order is what i configured for the vMotion portgroup: vmnic1 as active nic anc vmnic0 as standby.

I just described my actual configuration.

What do you think? Am I wrong somewhere?

I tried to use esxtop (great!) during a vMotion to check the load balancing, but I'm not very accustomed with it.

Is there a way to see the same via PowerCLI?

During a vMotion I could see only vmk1 e vmnic1 moving packet at a range of about 900 mbit/s (I'm using 1Gb/s interfaces)

Since I configured vmnic1 as the active uplink Nic for the vMotion portgroup, I think the vMotion traffic is not load balanced.

Thank you very much for you help

[SubnetJO]

Sure! I'm not worried for the managemen portgroup.

Since I know that for management 1 gb/s is surely enough, what I wanted to do is to improve the vMotion performance using the bandwith allowed by the "management nic", or even adding more pNICs... but I have to see that I cannot do this using v4.1.

I will wait to be allowed to plan for an upgrade to version 5.

Thank you for your support.