Multiple network adapters

[AndrewAustin]

So I have 4 NIC's in my server, I have NIC0 setup as the management network with my IP address, but how do I assign the remaining 3 IP's?

[jrenton]

You can add additional network interface to your virtual switch to provide resillience.

If you have 4 NICs I would suggest separating your management and virtual machine networks. To do this add a second vSwitch by clicking the Add network button. Add a port group for virtual machines and name it Prod network and add 2 physical NICs to the vSwitch. Now any new virtual machine you create and give a virtual NIC on the Prod Network port group will have shared use of the 2 physical NICs you have assigned to the vSwitch.

I would then go into the original vSwitch and remove the VM Network port group and add an addtional physical NIC.

This method gives you separate management and virtual machine vSwitches and redundancy on both switches.

Will you be using more than one host? If so you will need to add a VMKernel port to the management vSwitch then tick the vMotion box.

VMKernel will require an IP address. Apart from that your VMs will be given IP addresses too. Each physical connection does not require its own IP as this is a virtual environment.

Hope this is helpful

John

[AndrewAustin]

I have done that already, what I don't understand is what IP address are the other NIC using? Are they all sharing the one IP address? Do they all need their own IP assigned? If so how do you assign IP's to the other 3 NIC's.

[AntonVZhbankov · Accepted solution]

Here is detailed description how ESX works with network: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

To be quick and simple:

1. There are virtual L2 switches on ESX

2. Physical NICs are used as uplinks on vSwitches

3. vSwitch can have more than one uplink, and can have zero uplinks

4. vSwitches can not be connected directly

5. The only way to connect 2 vSwitches - to create VM connected to both vSwitches and set up routing in guest OS

6. VMs are to be connected to special abstract called portgroups, not to vSwictch directly

7. There can be VLAN assigned to portgroup, uplink (physical NIC) usage policy for portgroup etc.

There are a lot of ways to setup your 3 (actually 4) NICs, depending on your needs.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AntonVZhbankov]

ESX can not assign IP's to physical NICs, you can assign IP to virtual machine or service interface and tell ESX that traffic from particular VM or service interface should go through particular NIC or NICs. This gives you flexibility.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AndrewAustin]

So the light went on for me!!

I have 3 vSwitches

vSwitch0 - vmnic0 - Management Network

vSwitch1 - vmnic1 and 2 - Virtual Machine Network - these two nics don't get IP's because they are the pass thru for virtuals to get IP's

vSwitch2 - vmnic3 - I want to make the VMotion and iSCSI, but I am having trouble making another VMkernal on the same subnet.

Error during the configuration of the host: You can not create two or more vmkernel nics on the smae subnet. Avmkernel nic with name Managemenr Nerwork already exists in that subnet:10.10.235.0/255.255.255.0.

[AntonVZhbankov]

So use another subnet or just one Vmkernel interface. I have one VMkernel for both management and VMotion - works fine.

Or upgrade to vSphere, there is possibilty to divide managemet, vmotion and fault tolerance traffic to different interfaces.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru