DL585 Network Configuration with HA and DRS

[Damon_Yates]

I have a design type question about the best us of NIC's in my new DL585's with ESX 3.0.1.

I have 2 * dual port PCI NICs, 2 * Onboard NIC's and an ILO2 connection.

My initial plan was as follows.

All four PCI NICS pooled for the VM's - trunked to two switches and using vLAN tagging on the port groups - this works well in our test lab configuration.

1 On Board dedicated for Service Console

1 On Board dedicated for VMKernal (configured for vMotion)

In addition I was thinking of adding a second Service Console port to the pooled VM's vSwitch (the 2 * Dual PCI NICs). My thinking is that this would give some resillience to the HA heartbeat in the case of a failure to the primary Service Console NIC.

So my question is... will HA successfully use a port on the VM's vSwitch in the event of a failure to the primary Service Console NIC...

And... Does this seem like a good use of the available ports? I could by more NIC's but don't really want to if I can help it.

Thanks

[esiebert7625 · Accepted solution]

Thats how I do it on my DL585 which also has 6 NIC's.

Yes HA will use the second port in case of failure of the other NIC. You can also use tagging on your SC and have it on one of your switches with your VM's and have multiple NICs assigned to it.

Here's a long thread on setting up a 2nd SC:

Second Service Console NIC - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=536518&#536518

Some additional networking links....

VMware ESX Server 3 802.1Q VLAN Solutions - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf

Networking Virtual Machines - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/TAC9689-A.pdf

Networking Scenarios & Troubleshooting - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9689-b.pdf

ESX3 Networking Internals - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=41

High Performance ESX Networking - http://www.vmware-tsx.com/download.php?asset_id=43

Network Throughput in a Virtual Infrastructure - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_network_planning.pdf

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Thanks, Eric

Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Damon_Yates]

Thanks for that... I had a feeling it would be OK but always good to check..

[Damon_Yates]

Esiebert 7625

I just read the thread about setting up the second Service Console and it seems that the solution was to have a different IP range assigned to the second Service Console connection? Is this how you have done it? I was planning to use an address in the same IP range for the additional console - do you think that would work?

Thanks

[esiebert7625]

I actually meant I configured my NIC's like you did, 4 for VM vSwitches, 1 for the SC and 1 for vMotion.

On some of my other servers with less NIC's I put the SC on the same vSwitch as the VM's and have multiple NIC's assigned to it.

I would think you could use the same IP range, you would probably want your pnic for the 2nd SC to be on a separate physical switch so a switch failure does not take out both of them.