Adding a secondary NIC to another network in a VM

[wardog25]

We have a couple ESX 3.5 servers that were set up by someone else. All virtuals on them connect to our primary trusted network.

Well now I have a VM that needs to connect to our SAN. To do that with a physical box, I would just connect a second NIC to the switch that goes to our SAN (that switch is not connected to our trusted network, it is an entirely different IP range), but obviously I cannot do that with a VM.

The ESX servers already have a connection to that switch, because the SAN is where they store the all the VMWare images. But I have no idea where to begin setting this up to allow the VMs themselves to have a secondary NIC to go to the SAN switch.

How would I go about that?

Thanks

[RParker]

What are you trying to do, setup NFS for the VM's?

[FranckRookie]

If your ESXs already have a connection to this network, then you should have a vSwith attached to the physical ports on that IP SAN.

So you just have to create a Portgroup for your VM on that vSwitch. Then add a vNic to your VM and attach this card to the vSwitch.

Regards

Franck

[wardog25]

iSCSI.

I just want to be able to add a SAN disk drive to a VM. For that I need one NIC to connect to our trusted network, and the second NIC to go to the SAN switch so that I can map it to the disk drive with iSCSI.

[wardog25]

Franck, thanks for the answer. I'm fairly new to VMWare, can you tell me where I would go to do those tasks?

[athlon_crazy]

There must be a reason why your SAN been isolated and using different network (security policy or performance reason). I won't directly connect VM to SAN storage or comprise with what already been configured. Since your SAN using iscsi protocol and already have connection with your ESX, why don't go for RDM instead? This option do not require you to setup another vSwitch or port group. Just present new LUN to all ESX hosts, edit VM, add RDM disk and use new LUN and you suppose can use it like normal disk.

vcbMC-1.0.6 Beta

vcbMC-1.0.7 Lite

[FranckRookie · Accepted solution]

Go to your vSwitch configuration, add a virtual machine port group (give it a name like "iScsi VM portgroup").

Then add a new network card to your VM and attach it to the new port group.

[wardog25]

Is that something you do on the ESX host or in VMware Infrastructure Client, or what?

[FranckRookie]

It's easier to do it with the VI Client, Network configuration of your ESX.

[wardog25]

Thanks, that worked!