Can I share a VSwitch with VMotion and Virtual machine Network

[MorganC]

I've got a three Physical Host Setup where we have VSwitch3 dedicated to one Virtual Machine Port Group called Virtual machine Network. Only one of our VM's is allowed to use this Port Group. It needs alot of bandwidth at certain times, but not all the time. We also have VSwitch2 that only has one VMKernal Port for VMotion. I would like to free up the NIC that is used by VSwitch3 for a second iSCSI Pathway. Would it be ok to move the Virtual Machine Port Group to VSwitch2 and have it have both VMotion and theVirtual Machine Port Group? We have some VMotion traffic, but usually not mush more than one or two migrations per day. Most days, there are no migrations.

Thanks,

Morgan

[weinstein5]

You can but actually it would be better if you shared it with the Service Console port unlessof course you are using ESXi - if you were to share it with the VMs when that spike hits it might impact the ability to vmotion with no one noticing -

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[Texiwill]

Hello,

Check out my Topology Blogs which go into what you should share and what you should not. Basically sharing vMotion with anything but the SC would be considered a security issue.

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.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[MorganC]

Thanks for the suggestion - I guess I should ahve described the other VSwitches. We have four Physical NICS and four VSwitches.

VSwitch0 - Virtual Machine Port Group (VM Network - used by all but one VM) AND Service Console

VSwitch1 - Service Console (iSCSI) AND VMKernel Port (iSCSI)

VSwitch2 - VMKernel Port (VMotion)

VSwitch3 - Virtual Machine Port Group (Virtual Machine Network - only one VM Allowed to use it)

My goal is to free up VSwitch3 to use for ISCSI failover. We have an AX150i with two storage processors.

iSCSI Setup:

ESX1 - iSCSI IP 192.168.100.21

ESX2 - iSCSI IP 192.168.101.22

ESX3 - iSCSI IP 192.168.100.23

SAN iSCSI Setup:

SPA-0 192.168.100.10

SPA-1 192.168.101.10

SPB-0 192.168.100.11

SPB-1 192.168.101.11