We are using 4* HP DL580 x7460 to build a vSphere cluster with HA, DRS, vMotion and Fault Tolerance. We are planning to have 7 NICs in each ESX and just wondering anyone can give some advice on building a redundant NIC design with FC SAN.
With the 7 NICs we'll have Service Console, vMKernal andhe also Team some of the NICs for VM use. Any recommendations on documents for best fault tolerant NIC configuration?
Cheers
Since you're using FC, no IP storage is needed.
vSwitch1:
-Portgroup "Service Console" - NIC0 active, NIC1 standby, NIC2 standby
-Portgroup VMkernel1 (VMotion) - NIC1 active, NIC0 standby, NIC2 standby
-Portgroup VMkernel2 (Falut Tolerance) - NIC2 active, NIC0 standby, NIC1 standby
At least 2 physical cards must be used - i.e. NIC0-2 can't be on one multiport card.
vSwitch2:
-Portgroup "VM Network" - NIC3-6 active, IP-hash
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MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009
We have a similar requirements (Fault Tolerance & High Availability) but we have a slightly different hardware setup:
2 ESXi hosts with 8 NICs (1 quad-port (A), 2 dual-ports (B & C)) in each host
Physical NIC A (NICs 1-4)
Physical NIC B (NICs 5-6)
Physical NIC C (NICs 7-8)
We are using iSCSI SAN for storage. In addition to redundant core switches, we have redundant iSCSI switches.
Switch 1
Switch 2
Switch 3 - iSCSI
Switch 4 - iSCSI
What would you recommend for a configuration here? My question is mainly surrounding the redundancy of the Management Network portion. So far we have:
VSwitch1:
NIC 1 - VMKernel Management Network into Switch 2 (Switch 1 for other host)
NIC 2 - VMKernel VMotion into Switch 1 (Switch 2 for other host)
VSwitch2:
NIC 4 - VMKernel iSCSI (w/ NIC 5 teamed but unused) into Switch 3
NIC 5 - VMKernel iSCSI (w/ NIC 4 teamed but unused) into Switch 4
VSwitch3:
NIC 3 - VM Network Port Group + VMKernel Management Network into Switch 1
NIC 8 - VM Network Port Group + VMKernel Management Network into Switch 2
VSwitch4:
NIC 6 - VMKernel Fault Tolerant Logging into Switch 1
NIC 7 - VMKernel Fault Tolerant Logging into Switch 2
I have a feeling this is becoming unnecessarily overcomplicated....