NIC Interface Affinity

[RParker]

OK, I am bound and determined to make this ESX do my bidding!

So I have 4 NIC's. Each one is on a different subnet (I have reasons for doing this).

My question is, when I login to a console, say at 10.1 subnet, and then login at 10.2 subnet, is each one actually using that IP.. or since the console has it's own pre-determined NIC, it always uses the same NIC?

Here's is what I am trying to do. I am actively migrating from 12 different ESX 2.54 Servers, into a larger more capable VI3 server. So I want to open a session from 1 segment (with ESX server on that segment) and transfer a file. Open another session, connect to segment #2, and open a session with ESX server, transfer a file..

This way I can transfer 2 or 3 files at once, and not affect the speed on the segment from my other downloads.

Each Segment is a different switch, I got that covered, I am trying to migrate 100 VM's (and we don't have the SAN setup yet). So for now, I just want to get off the ESX 2.54 2 lane road, and move to the VI3 superhighway... you dig?

[postfixreload]

For ESX 3 as long as the service console attached on different virtual switch and each virtual switch has different out going NIC you are ok. However, on ESX 2.x you need to assign the NIC to either host or vmkernel, if you have 4 NIC, and only 1 assigned to console. then you only have 1 NIC to transfer the file to ESX 3 servers. even ESX 3 can accept files from different service consoles

[RParker]

Yeah ESX 3.0 has 4 NIC's, ESX 2.54 have only 2 NIC's, so that's not a problem.

I would have to setup 4 service consoles then, in order to have each one dedicated to a different NIC then huh?

[postfixreload · Accepted solution]

yes, you do

[mbrkic]

Even if you create 4 service console interfaces (vswif's) it will be the routing in the service console that governs which way the traffic will flow for any given connection. So it will depend on the subnet placement of your 12 2.5 servers.

For example if your ESX2.5 server is on the 10.1 subnet, then regardless of what interface you use to log into the console (say 10.2) if you have a local interface (on the ESX 3 box) configured on 10.1 the traffic for that ESX2.5 host will go through that interface.

So you will have to configure things correctly at layer 2 and 3, and on ESX 2.5 and ESX 3 side.

Since it is usually not the network switches that are the bottleneck, it might be easier to create one vswif on top of a bond of 4 nics on ESX 3 and to make multiple transfers to multiple ESX2.5 hosts.

Of course the best would be if you can present your ESX 3.0 host the storage from the ESX2.5 hosts and avoid dragging things through ethernet at all.

[RParker]

<< Of course the best would be if you can present your ESX 3.0 host the storage from the ESX2.5 hosts and avoid dragging things through ethernet at all. >>

Can you tell me how I would go about doing that?

[mbrkic]

The ESX3 host can see the vmfs2 LUNs, read-only. If you present them it will see them. Then you can copy the vmdks to the vmfs3 partition, and copy only the small vmx files over the network.

Once they are on VMFS3 partition you can upgrade the VMs and away you go.

[RParker]

Well I did sftp to copy them, but there is no need to upgrade the VM.

vmkfstools has a feature for this called migrate (-"-m") however this only takes a millisecond to complete, but the first time the console sees this file it converts it for you.

vmkfstools -i no longer does an import, it's a clone. I did test this, and everything works fine (snapshots, advanced features, etc..) so I am good now.