ESX 3.0.1 - NIC Sharing

[mattroessner]

We are running ESX 3.0.1 on IBM Blades (HS21s). We have dual nics in them and I was curious if under ESX 3.0.1 both NICs are shared to the VMs or if 1 still needs to be dedicated to the service console.

Thanks!

[ZMkenzie · Accepted solution]

Short answer: no.

For redundancy you should put the console AND the vm on the same vSwitch and then assign both your ports to that switch. After you should enable vlan tagging on that ports so you can use any network you like on that vSwitch. You don't need to configure any aggregation on the switch, vmware will balance the traffic transparently between the two ports.

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

You have a number of options:

1) have a separate nic for both the service console and the virtual machines

2) team together, both nics active for both services, and using the aggregate for both

3) team together but with the service console active on nic 1 and standby on nic 2 with the virtual machine portgroup(s) active on nic 2 and standby on nic 1

There are pros and cons to each. For a small and simple config I would do 3 unless you have a lot of network traffic ( in which case I would also configure my physical switch to load balance incoming traffic ). I wouldn't do 1.

If you are doing vmotion then I would do 2 but put together vm and service console and have vmotion on it's own nic.

More nics is always better but I don't know what your options are with those IBM blades.

Hope that helps!