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VMFIZZ
Contributor
Contributor

Is Nic teaming necessary?

I just installed an ESX environment connecting to an HP MSA2324i Storage array through my switched environment.

Is it necessary to create trunks on the switches to improve throughput preformace?

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AlbertWT
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

It depends on the switch itself (802.3ad LACP support + jumbo frame) and the SP of the SAN (can do both simultaneous connection rather than round robin).

if both of those prerequiste then go ahead mate |Smiley Happy

Kind Regards,

AWT

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malaysiavm
Expert
Expert

Is not necessary to trunk it but if your switch is supported, then you should turn this on. If you are using the ISCSI configuration, you may have different target IP to be configured. But I will suggest you to turn on the jumbo frame on vSwitch, physical switch and your storage box to boost the performance.

Craig

vExpert 2009

Malaysia VMware Communities -

Craig vExpert 2009 & 2010 Netapp NCIE, NCDA 8.0.1 Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com
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AWo
Immortal
Immortal

In general you get better performance by using more than one NIC for a vSwitch.

At least you get a distribution of the virtual NIC's used by the guests across the physical NIC's if you have dumb switches and depending on the algorithm you choose in the virtual switch.

Read this document (page 😎 on which load balancing policy you should use: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

If you have a smart switch which supports a load balancing protocol you may should use "Route based on IP hash", because it makes it possible for one virtual machine to use more than one physical NIC, depending on the destination IP address the actual packet has.


AWo

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