Newbe question regarding network setup of ESXi 3.5

[Crowdedisland]

I have ESXi 3.5 running nicely on a Dell Poweredge T300. I want to hookup a Netgear ReadyNas Pro Business Edition to this Dell and connect it by iscsi.

I want to connect 1 nic from the ReadyNas to 1 nic from the Dell.

My question is on the Dell when I go to ESXi server and customize by hitting F2 and goto network settings I see the following:

X vmnic0 embeeded nic1

vmnic1 embedded nic2 used by vswitch1

Maybe I am being thick but can you explain which nic on the ESXi server is being used for interenet access and which one I need to configure for the iscsi? I thought it should be obvious but is it vmnic0 or vmnic1?

[Lightbulb]

Can access your host via Virtual infastructure client? If so can you see more detail under "configuration" "networking"

[Crowdedisland]

Thanks for the reply. I am still slightly confused.

The Readynas is configured for nic1 192.168.2.107 and nic2 192.168.168.168

I am not sure if vmnic1 even has an ip address but I have attached a diagram that may show you.

Also do I need to have two nics configured on each vm that wants to use the Readynas as an iscsi target?

[Lightbulb · Accepted solution]

Your ESXi host has two configured vswitchs each of which uplinks to physical NIC in system.

vswitch0 which uplinks to vmnic0 (Which despite having a red x indicating an issue seems to be fine) this vswitch holds you management interface (IP 192.168.2.107) and a virtual machine portgroup for your VMS.You also have another vswitch vswitch1 which uplinks to GB NIC vmnic1. This vswitch has unused virtual machine port group. Also a VLAN ID has been set for this vswitch which would lead me to belive that VST is/was operating on this host in the past.

Did you set this up? If not i would suggest getting with whoever did.

Checkout "The Great vSwitch Debate" parts 1 and 2 for starters.

[Crowdedisland]

Thank ou for pointing that out. The second vswitch was my attempt to setup a second network on a different vlan for testing purposes. I realized that

1. I can do that on one switch using port groups

2. My physical firewall doesn't support 1q so it doesn't mattter for now

I have deleted the second vswitch and now can add it to the managment network if that is what I should do buit when I do that it tells me it will add it for fault tolerance and load balancing not so Ic an use it for another subnet. Is this something I configure at the vswitch elvel ?