Rookie setup question

[ark50]

Hi all,

I have a fresh install of ESX 3.5, our VM Server has 4 physical ports and we will be storing the VM's on an iscsi Equallogic SAN. To start with, we will have 4 or 5 virtual machines (of course this will grow some over time). Can someone recommend a virtual switch configuration (i.e. how many to use and what ports go on each)? Also, how should I divide up the 4 nics to achieve the best performance?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

[Benjamin_Craig]

If you're available next Thursday the 31st, I'd be happy to offer some suggestions at the VMware user group meeting.

-Ben

[TomHowarth]

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Tom Howarth

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[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

If you have VLANs on your networks and can isolate SC/VMs that way:The SC should be relatively low usage but could spike during backups and other things.

pNIC0 -> vSwitch0 -> SC

pNIC1 -> vSwitch0 -> VMs

pNIC2 & pNIC3 -> vSwitch1 -> iSCSI

Otherwise to give best redundancy for iSCSI.

pNIC0-> vSwitch0 -> SC

pNIC1 & pNIC2 -> vSwitch1 -> iSCSI

pNIC3 -> VMs

For this configuration you really want 6 pNICs for full redundancy however. If you through in vMotion then 8. But you could get away with 6 w/vMotion if you really had to.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[ark50]

Thanks Ben,

I look forward to meeting you. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions.

Mark Novotny

[ark50]

This was very helpful.

Thank you!