Non Routable VLANS and VI3 questions

[girven]

I have two pNIC'S sharing the Service Console and VMKernel (VMotion). The Service Console and the VMKernel share the same vSwitch. The Service console is configured to use pNIC0 as the active adapter and pNIC1 as the passive. The VMKernel is configured to use pNIC1 as the active adapter and pNIC0 as the passive. There are other NICs for the VMs.

Would putting both pNIC's in a non routable VLAN affect anything? The Virtual Center server would be dual homed with a connection to our production network and a connection to the non routable VLAN.

Is there anything other than Virtual Center that needs to talk directly to the ESX servers?

What would be the disadvantages of this configuration?

[mcowger]

We do exactly this.

Other things that might need to conenct to the SC could be backup agents, tools like Veeam FastSCP, etc.

--Matt

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

It's a good idea to do. As mentioned you may need access to the SC from other applications and you will need direct access to the service console to run Remote Console sessions if you running the VI client on remote PCs. See the port document here - http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2500

[girven]

I don't see us doing any remote console sessions from our desktops to the service consoles of the ESX servers (All ESX servers will be managed with Virtual Center). In the event we need to do this we can use the Virtual Center server or add another dual homed server. This is a really small deployment of 9 8420 SUN Blades. We will be doing a major server, SAN, and network solution later this year. With that solution they will be purchasing dedicated switches for the Sservice Console and the VMotion network.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

The remote console connection is for the console session on a virtual machine. When you start the VI client, you'll connect to the VC server. But when you subsequently select a virtual machine and then select the Console tab, the VI client makes a connection to the service console of the ESX host to run the VNC session.

[girven]

Thank you both for your help