Hi,
I am working on a ESX server implementatoin project, can you all please tell me how, can I use the 10 nics on the server, for best utilization?
I was thinking on these lines
2 nics for the service console.
2 nics for Vmotion
3 nics for the Virtual machine
Now sure, what to do with 10 other nics.
Any suggestions/ideas will be highly appreciated.
Thanks
Aloha - We are about to swap out our dual-port NICs with quads, giving us 14 pNICs per host (two on-board also). This is my intended layout -
vSwitch0 - Service Console - 2 pNICs
vSwitch1 - Service Console for iSCSI SAN - 2 pNICs (VMotion enabled)
vSwitch2 - Internal Network VMs #1 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch3 - Internal Network VMs #2 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch4 - Internal Network VMs #3 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch5 - DMZ Network VMs - 2 pNICs
vSwitch6 - SAN Data Storage (for VMs using iSCSI initiator) - 2 pNICs
Hopefully this will give you some ideas.
Bill
To be honest, I would not worry about using all the NICs if you don't need them... you never know what may happen in the future, so available NICs may well come in handy.
For example, you set the ESX servers up with 2 nics for SC, 2 nics for VMotion and 4 for VM Network. So this leaves you with 4 available NICs from the 10 NICs. Then say you want to add iSCSI later on, you can do this with no need to either add cards or remove capacity from existing switches. Another possible use that may come up later on is having the DMZ network available on ESX, the spare ports would come in very useful in that scenario as well.
Hello,
Minimally:
2 pNICs for SC
2 pNICs for VMotion
2 pNICs for VMs
alternative networks possible.....
2 pNICs for NFS
2 pNICs for iSCSI
2 pNICs for DMZ
Having spare pNIC is always desirable..
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.
CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization
My standard architecture for virtual network is:
1. pNIC1->SC/VMotion
2. pNIC2->VMotion/SC
3. pNIC3-4->VM Network
4. pNIC5-6->DMZ Network
5. pNIC7-8->Backup Network (VCB or NetBackup)
6. pNIC9-10->NFS/iSCSI or any uses.
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Regards,
Stefan Nguyen
iGeek Systems Inc.
VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant
Hello,
However, if you do not need to combine SC/Vmotion on the same pair of pNICs it is actually more secure. This however depends on your trust of VLANs and whether or not you want to use VLANs.
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.
CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization
Aloha - We are about to swap out our dual-port NICs with quads, giving us 14 pNICs per host (two on-board also). This is my intended layout -
vSwitch0 - Service Console - 2 pNICs
vSwitch1 - Service Console for iSCSI SAN - 2 pNICs (VMotion enabled)
vSwitch2 - Internal Network VMs #1 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch3 - Internal Network VMs #2 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch4 - Internal Network VMs #3 - 2 pNICs
vSwitch5 - DMZ Network VMs - 2 pNICs
vSwitch6 - SAN Data Storage (for VMs using iSCSI initiator) - 2 pNICs
Hopefully this will give you some ideas.
Bill
You never know what you will need the NICs for but they are great to have just in case. Besides, I have had ESX re-order the NICs after adding a new one. Not fun. NICs are relatively cheap, do it now.
So with an average of 0.5% utilization of your nics that's really useful indeed. I would keep the money in my pocket...
Duncan
My virtualisation blog:
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