NIC Teaming Best Practise

[Pound]

Hi,

I have 1 server that has 8 gigabit ports inside. There will be 6 VLAN (including VLAN ID 4095) inside this ESX server. Is it best practise to team up all 8 gigabit ports and link to vSwitch0 (Default) and create port group per VLAN?

Regards,

T.S.

[java_cat33]

That will certainly work, however it's a better practise in my opinion to have a seperate vswitch for your DMZ traffic, a seperate vSwtich for standard VM traffic, seperate vswitch for your service console and vmkernel portgroups (although these 2 can be on the same vswitch).

[ascari]

depending from: vm number or better traffic bandwith that you need.

A best paractices is separate SC from vm traffic. In your case you can setup a bond with a couple of nics for sc and vmotion and other 4 nics for vlan tagged traffic for your vm.

Remember: is better use vlan and port group in a single teamed vswitch than use multiple switch. VSwitch load vmkernel activity.

I hope useful this notes

bye Alberto

[Pound]

It seem likes all documents about ESX server said that we need to seperate Service Console and VMkernal to different NIC. This may be a stupid question to ask guru that why we need to do if one of advantages for NIC teaming is automatic failover. In my case, why do we team all 8 NICs to handle all network traffic?

[ascari · Accepted solution]

absolutely is not a stupid question

Only for security and performance reason. You can use teaming configuration in boht case. (2 nics for sc and vmotion and 4 nics for vlan tagged vm)

It's importand to undertatnd that there is not an absolutely answare, but only a best practice, and it's correct also your design.

Thank's Alberto

[Jasemccarty]

Have you seen Texiwill's post?

http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Gears_-_Virtual_Networking

Jase McCarty, VCP, vExpert

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

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