Another 'I have 6 NICs, what's the best setup (which teams, how to load balance etc.' discussion

[jfk8680]

Hi,

I saw a couple discussions regarding this subject in these discussion groups but I didn't want to intrude in those specific threads and lead the discussion away from the original poster (since my hardware setup is slighty different). I am designing my first Virtual Infrastructure from scratch and would like your opinion on the setup I have come up with so far:

Here goes:

I have four blades (HP BL460c) with six NICs; one dual port NIC embedded on the mainboard (pNIC0 and pNIC1) and a PCI-E quad port NIC (pNIC2 through pNIC5).

pNIC0 - pNIC2: Service console --> connects to a vSwitch with a Service Console port group

pNIC1 - pNIC3: Virtual Machines --> connects to a vSwitch with three port groups: VLAN Test, VLAN Acceptance and VLAN Production)

pNIC4 - pNIC5: VMKernel (vmotion) --> connects to a vSwitch with a VMKernel port group)

(We will not be using iSCSI by the way.)

I have been reading a lot on the different load balancing options in ESX. According to what I've read so far, load balancing based on IP hash on the ESX host and creating a port channel with the src-dest-ip algorithm on the switch should give me the best load balancing performance. Our Cisco 3750 switches are configured as as single switch stack so if I'm correct I can create port channels across the switches to keep redundancy.

We will be providing virtual machines in three VLAN's: Test VLAN, Acceptance VLAN and Production VLAN. I have to create trunk ports on the physical switches that connect to pNICs 1 and 3, right?

I have attached a JPG of my design by the way...

Thanks!

Jeffrey

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Your setup looks fine to me. It offers a good blend of redundancy, and security. If you can guarantee your VMs will not overload the VM Network then performance is also is fine. If not then you may want to plan what to do if the VM Network portgroups do get overloaded. You have several options available, have another vSwitch with more pNIC, implement Traffic Shaping within each portgroup, Use Network shares, or let the VMs be throttled naturally. I know some of the test we run purposefully fill the pipes to see the performance when the web traffic is incredibly high and that will affect your Production VLAN. However, with 2GB that could take a bit of doing. Just some more food for thought. Personally would opt for traffic shaping to make sure such tests do not affect the Production VLAN.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Cody_Page]

Everything you mentioned sounds good.

And just like I mentioned in the last thread, why not team all 6 NICs and have a Portgroup/VLAN assigned on your vSwitch for Vmotion?

Also be sure to check out the thread that mentions the driver issues with Intel Quadport NICs and VLAN tagging across teamed NICs.