ESX 3.5 Dell PE 2650 NIC setup and virtual networking

[brettcw23]

We just got 3 of these boxes from an acquisition. Can anyone recommend the "best" setup for NICs?

I was thinking use the 2 on board for the SC (teamed). Add a quad port nic or 2 x dual port nics for Vmotion and the virtual machine networks.

Any sugesstions on configuring the networks? Do you trunk them so that all the vm's run across each physical nic? My thought were sc on the OB nics, 1 port for vmotion and the other 3 for the VM's.

Thanks in advance!!!

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

If you have 6 ports NIC for your ESX hosts than that would be good. You can do combination settings but prefer is follow:

Use this scenario if you want both redundant and secure network as well.

1. vNIC1->SC/VMotion

2. vNIC2->VMotion/SC

3. vNIC3-4->VM Network

4. vNIC5-6->DMZ Network

Use this if you don't want secure network and provide seperate vNIC for the ports themselves.

1. vNIC1-2>SC redundant

2. vNIC3-4>VMotion redundant

3. vNIC5-6->VM Network redundant

I do not have trunking implemented for my ESX network but if you need more practical ESX networking and trunking access www.vmware-land.com has several docs for it.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[brettcw23]

I am uncertain as to why you say one issecure versus the other?

Thank you for the link, too.

[azn2kew]

Both models of Networking are secure but I'm saying that if you need to host any DMZ servers like web, ftp and mail servers than you should assign a DMZ network ports for them specifically and better off, create its own DMZ cluster so that no other servers can accidently being drop over. You can also create VLANs for your DMZ network as well.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[kjb007]

In one of my environments, I trunk all 6 of my interfaces, and allow all of my VLANs on each port, so if in the future I need to re-allocate, it's easy enough.

Stefan's breakdown is very good. The only thing I would add, is to make sure the team members are on a different physical bus. Meaning, don't put 2 ports on one NIC as part of the same team, because if the NIC goes out, your team is dead. If you had 2 on board, 2 2-port nics, I would team 13, 25, 4+6.

Hope that makes sense.

-KjB