vMotion help - VLAN, Link Aggregation?!

[TB_Rich]

Hi,

I need some help please setting up my ESX Networking. I am trying to reduce our NIC usage from 6 to 4 and have set aside 2 servers to test on. I have just setup these 2 servers like this;

1 vSwitch with 2 pNICS. On this vSwitch I have;

SC-VLAN 1

LAN vmnetwork-VLAN 1

DMZ vmnetwork-VLAN 3

vmKernel-VLAN 11

I can communicate with the ESX Host fine, so VLAN 1 is working OK. I have powered up a machine (no HDD attatched), now I should be able to vmotion this across to the other host fine, BUT, its not working - just timing out.

I am not a Networking guy but I have asked the network guy for the VLAN info and thats what he gave me. We also setup Link Aggregation on the Cisco switch and setup Load Based IP hash on the ESX Networking side of it on both the SC,vmnetowrks and vmKernel. My thoughts were that it should use both NICS have give us 2GB as potentially 1GB would not be that much bandwidth for 4 things.

We do this for NFS (IP hash and link aggregation) for 2GB and it works fine. But this is on a seperate vSwitch, seperate pSwitch and no VLAN tagging. I am guessing the VLAN stuff is stopping it from working??

Any help would be great.

Thanks,

Rich.

[proden20]

Rich,

Not sure why you're trying to reduce your number of nics (reduce ports?) but..

• Your vmotion nics need to be Gb.

• Make sure your vmkernel port group is enabled for vMotion.

• Make sure your Vmotion IPs are on the same subnet and are not the same

• Use vmkping from the service consoles to ensure the machines can see each other

Not sure about VLAN's for vMotion at the moment, never tried it. Are the above set properly?

Dennis.

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Dennis Procopio - VCP

[TB_Rich]

Hi,

Yeah thats why, saving ports. We have 20 hosts and expanding all the time. We have DL series mahines with 2 onboard ports and 2x 2 port nics. We are installing fibre channel cards so loosing 2 nics. I wanted to have a useable solution with 4 nics rather than replace the remaining 2 port nic with a quad port card. The Cisco 3750 switches that they plug into are expensive so saving currently 40 cables will save almost an entire switch!!

Turned out the network guy hadn't done something with VLAN 11 correctly which was the vmotion one. Using vmkping I was able to confirm when he had sorted his side - thanks for the suggestion.

I now have 1 vSwitch with 2 1GB nics setup with IP hash load balancing so will utilize 2GB badnwitch for multiple IP targets. The vSwitch will service the vMotion Network, SC, LAN and DMZ networks. Seem's to me like a good solution??

Cheers,

Rich.

[proden20]

Sure as long as the bandwidth is enough for your virtual machines and DRS activity. Did your network engineer use LACP at the switch side?

Dennis Procopio - VCP