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Gui
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best practices for esx networking?

What are the best practices for the virtual switches?

i have 3 virtual switches. and 6 nic's

1. for the vm's and service console 1 i currently use 3 nics

2. for the vmkernel and service console 2 i use 1 nic

3. for vmotion i currently use 1 nic but have a second one assigned not activated yet.

should i use 2 nic's for vmotion or use 1 nic?

should i use 2 nics's for the vmkernel or just 1 nic.

when using the rest of the nics for the vm's will esx divide the traffic evenly so that performance is highest? or do i have to do anything?

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MR-T
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He means 2 vmnics connected to the same vswitch. This is known as a "bond"

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MR-T
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Personally I'd usually just keep a single NIC for VMotion then have a bond for the service console and a bond for the vm's.

Depending on your environment, you might need the remaining nic for a private backup lan.

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RParker
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If you use IP segments, then you can use different Nic's, otherwise I would only use 1 for initial service console (why have 2?) then bond ALL the other NIc's into 1 fat NIC (maybe some failover clustering) and reserve the last for VMotion (You only need 1).

You have plenty of NIC's, and your ideas are sound, but if I were doing it that's how I would do it. Also these Nic's are they all the same type? Like Intel Pro 1000? I wouldn't mix and mingle Nic types/brands. Keep all like nic's together, so that ALL Intels would be:

SC (1 nic)

VM (2 nic)

Vmotion (1 nic)

Then those other 2 nics (I suspect they are the integrated Nic's) use bonded for maybe another VM bond, but use the high priority Nics (a la Intel) as your main communication.

MR-T
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Why have 2 NICs for COS?

I should have qualified that.

If at any time you introduce HA, the heartbeat uses the service console network, so to avoid any split brain conditions it's useful.

If you're not into HA, don't bother.

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Gui
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would you put the service console with the vmkernel or with the vm's or on a separate vswitch?

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MR-T
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Usually a seperate virtual switch.

Especially in your case where you've got 6 NICs to play with.

Gui
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rparker, what do you mean by bond, a etherchannel or 802.3ad trunk or just a bunch of nic together?

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MR-T
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He means 2 vmnics connected to the same vswitch. This is known as a "bond"

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neil_murphy
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Jacob Jensen (Product Manager Datacenter I/O, VMware) did a session at TSX last week where he recomended a configuration where the service console and vmotion networks used a single vswitch which had two physical nics. One NIC was marked as preferred for SC and the other was marked as preferred for VMotion.

I have been looking for a copy of his presentation entitled "High Performance ESX Networking" but I can't find it. If anyone knows where it can be downloaded please let me know.

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pcomo
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Hi,

Yes, i heard this recommendation in this session too.

But after, in other session entitled "The Next Best Thing since sliced Bread: HA/DRS in production" presented by Nitin Suri (VMware, System Engineer) which he told us that we should separate vmotion and service console.

Now we don't know which version is exact and recommended.

Let me know.

Thanks.

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Gui
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i have configured my vlan for vmotion to be completely separate. and there us no routing available to the outside networks.

the dilemma that i have is do i put the service console on the same vlan as the vmkernel or on the same vlan as my vm's or on a completely separate network.

what is best?

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jhanekom
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Bit of a late response, but here it is...

I also attended both sessions and found the guy that presented the networking session to be a bit more knowledgable (or, at the very least, believable) on that particular subject.

I've used combined SC/VMotion in the past (on separate VLANs) and have had good results.

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