VMotion NIC Traffic

[PeterJC]

We are configuring ESX and VC on Blade servers with only 2 NICs (I know not the best setup - but that is what we have to work with) so to isolate VMotion traffic we are setting up a separate VLAN. Two questions:

1) Is there traffic between the subnet that you out ESX and VC on and the subnet for VMotion, or is the VMotion traffic just between the ESX servers?

2) I am planning to team the NICs using the IP Hash load balancing (connecting to Nortel switchs with MLT their name for 802.3ad), do you think it is work limiting the Service Console traffic to one NIC, VMotion traffic to the other and load balancing the VM traffic on both? Or just let the load balancing manage the traffic up for all three port group types?

Thanks for any insight.

[Niranec]

Hi

1. The vmotion traffic is only between the two ESX server, the only thing that is going out is the command to start vmotion from the VC and the acknowledge that the vmotion is progressing.

2. the issue with vmotion traffic that it is high capacity traffic and it is only bursts when vmotion occurs, that is why separating it to a different vlan donesn't have any advantages, because Vlan separation is a logical separation and not a physical separation. but limiting the traffic of vmotion to one NIC and binding the VM's to a different nic is best, not SC and vmotion. because you don't want the VM's and Vmtion interfering each other. the SC don't mind as much.

Niran E.C