how to determine which nic vmotion and sc are using

[pdrace]

I seem to remember seeing a discusssion(s) that explained how to view which vmnic service console traffic was using and which one vmotion was utilizing. Does anyone know how how to do this?

TIA

[donaldmickey]

Hi,

View your configuration:

Connect you on your VC's ESX and go "configuration" and Networking". Click on "Properties".

Line Command : # esxcfg-vswitch -l

You must configure your SC on one network Adapter and Vmotion on other network Adapter, and other NIC for LAN virtual serve (or the same for LAN and Vmotion).

it is necessary absolutely that the customer

it is necessary absolutely that the customer

[Gabrie1 · Accepted solution]

Hi

The command esxcfg-vswitch -l and esxcfg-vswif -l will tell you which nic is used for what. In esxtop then 'n' you can see how much traffic there is on the nics.

Gabrie

[Texiwill]

Hello,

However to identify the slot/port in use by vMotion and SC you will need to map slot/port to vmnic? device. To do that there are several ways. One is to watch for network traffic on the back of the machine when you specifically use one of the devices.

You need to map port/slot to PCI Device # to vmnic device. If you know the ordering of your PCI devices this is simple. However if you do not know this order then you should find this.

I do this by picking one edge of the PCI/PCI-e slots and disconnect cables one at a time, determining using the VIC Network adapters which device suddenly goes off line. Doing this for enough devices to determine the PCI Bus/port ordering of the cards in use.

I then maintain a map of Slot/Port <-> PCI Bus # <-> vmnic connections for each server. A diagram of the back of the server works wonderful.

Best regards,

Edward

[pdrace]

esxcfg-vswitch -l output for the switch in question:

vSwitch0 32 5 32 vmnic1,vmnic0

PortGroup Name Internal ID VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

VM Network portgroup18 0 0 vmnic0,vmnic1

Service Console portgroup0 0 1 vmnic0,vmnic1

VMkernel-vmotion portgroup3 0 1 vmnic0,vmnic1

If I run esxtop n no traffic on vmnic0, a small amount on vmnic1. If I migrate a vm using vmotion vmnic0 traffic goes way up, so it looks like vmnic0 is being used for vmotion and vmnic1 is being used for the SC.

So it appears that is the method to determine which nic is being used for each function.

[pdrace]

Yes, I have already documented the mapping of vmnics to physical nics for all my hosts.

[Gabrie1]

Hi

I'm not sure how Service Console and VMotion determin over which nic they will talk. You see traffic on vmnic0 when using vmotion, but is this every time?

If you can afford to put more nics in your server, you can dedicated two nic to Service Console and two to VMotion. Normally this is the desired config, however, if you have a small environment with only 2 hosts or maybe 4, you'll seldom run into network utilization problems I think.

Gabrie

[pdrace]

That's how it looks on this server. On the machine I was migrating from is is the opposite. Small amount of traffic on vmnic 0, none on vmnic1. Perform a migration and vmnic1 traffic goes way up.

I found there was an issue with one of the lines on the other server when testing HA. A network person had moved it to the wrong switch port by accident. I had the adapter it was connected to set to Standby. After I switched it to active vmotion stopped working. I was swappig lines back and forth as I also lost the service console at one point. I think that's why it ended up with the SC using vmnic1 rather than 0.

[zyx100]

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