How many NICs on each ESX Host are required for implementing VI 3 with iSCSI ?

[TonyJK]

We are planing to implement VI3 with iSCSI.

We would like to seek your advice that whether 2 Gigabit NICs are sufficient for each ESX 3.5 Host ?

From our understanding, one NIC is used for connecting to the LAN and the other one is for connecting to the iSCSI SAN via a private LAN.

Regards,

[mcowger]

Not unless you dont care about redundancy.

Realistically, if you want decent separation and redundancy, you need 6 NICs: 2 for SC, 2 for iSCSI, 2 for VMs.

Make that 3 if you dont care about redundancy.

--Matt

[weinstein5]

As matt pointed out if redundancy is not important - particularly since you will have to share a nic for the service and vms -

[TonyJK]

Dear Matt,

Thank you for your advice.

We will use 6 NICs as you suggested. Just to confirm whether our interpretation is correct

1) 2 NIC - One connected to Switch A and the other one to Switch B

2) 2 NIC for vSwitch0 - NIC Teaming for VM

3) 2 NIC for vSwitch1 - NIC Teaming for VC Console and VMotion

Thanks

[depping · Accepted solution]

6 indeed when using iSCSI.

Keep in mind that when a failover occurs STP kicks in so you will have to disable it or enable PortFast(cisco).

Your design is okay, I would go for an active/standby setup on the VMkernel / Service Console vSwitch! (vSwitch0) And use VirtualPort ID for loadbalancing on the others.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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[JohnGibson]

You might want to also consider doing some NFS testing, unless you are using hardware iSCSI initiators, you may find NFS outperforms iSCSI.

John