NIC-TEAMING and performance benefit

[Dandan712]

hello,

On my ESX server, I have 3 network cards.

I use the first card to the Console.

I use the second one for a virtual switch, on which are all my vms.

At the moment, I do not use the 3rd network card.

I was wondering if I can benefit from NIC teaming tehcnology in order to use this used 3rd card with the 2nd netwok card, in order to boos network performance ?

What do you think about that. Or if you think to a better way to organize my network cards, please tell me.

Thanks.

[Yattong]

Hey,

There lots of thing you can do with the additional nic, e.g vmotion or IP storage...

But if you're interested in NIC Teaming, then have a read of this:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/vmware/VMwaredg.pdf

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~y

[demz]

If I were you, I will consider to dedicate it to the VMotion Network or team it with the 2nd one in fact.

It's up to you, considering VM traffic, DRS policy...

[Dandan712]

What a good document !!! Thanks a lot for sharing it.

Regarding nic teaming , it's written the following. ( see below ) so I think it may improve performance.

Configuring redundant vSwitch uplinks adds redundancy and possibly performance by

leveraging different physical network paths and multiple physical NIC cards or ports.

NIC teaming allows to bundle heterogeneous NIC cards together in order to minimize the chance of

losing network connectivity due to a PCI card failure. Just like normal NIC teaming on servers, the NICs

need to be part of the same Layer 2 domain.

[Yattong · Accepted solution]

no problem,

It can definitely improve network bandwidth, especially if you read into the load balancing options.

e.g we can specify port group 1 on vSwitch 1 to use nic 1

port group 2 on vSwitch 1 to use nic 2 etc...

However, there is a trade off e.g. when you start to use IP Hash load balacing, there is an additional overhead on the CPU for the hashing.

I'll let you read up on it...

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

~y