How do the network cards in VMWARE act?

[MassageMonkey]

Hi guys,

Just a quick question. If you setup multiple NICS on a VMWARE 3.0.1 server so that, for example, 3 nics are allocated to a virtual switch. Are these nics load balanced, load balanced for outgoing or are they in a failover mode?

If they are in failover, is there any point having 3 nics allocated?

Thanks

Vish

[peetz]

You can configure that pretty much yourself. The options are load balancing (with different algorithms like IP-based or port-number-based) and active/passive-failover, and even mixtures of both.

IMO it's best to have the physical NICs connect to different physical switches and use all of them in a load-balancing configuration. Even in a load-balancing configuration ESX will failover from a failing link to a working link.

\- Andreas

[MassageMonkey]

Andreas,

thanks for your answer, just a very quick addition to it, where is the option to specify how the vnics act? I cant find it. 🐵

Thanks

Vish

[MassageMonkey]

Thanks for yoru help. Where is the option to change the nic configuration. If I go to the Properties of the vSwitch, I cant see anything there.

[MassageMonkey]

found the settings. thanks for the help 🐵