vMotion Network - IP Addressing and VLAN

[virtualhelp]

Hello,

Is there a problem if the vMotion address is in the same IP range and in the same vlan of the ESXi management network?

According to best practices vmotion should be in a different ip and vlan range.

I'm asking because the client currently has all its ESXi service, VM and vmotion, under the same ip range and vlan

[mbufkin]

Take a look at the Networking Best Practices for vSphere vMotion from VMware: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7DAD15D4-7F41-... 

[CLINZ]

Hi, as stated the best practice is to have them separated. As described in the link by the fellow poster vmware recommends seperation but from experience I have worked in environments where i have seen them configured both ways, at present we have them split as per the best practice recommendations but for many years i also worked in an environment where the management and the vmotion workloads were on the same VLAN but with different IP addresses. During my time working in that environment i don't believe any major issues arose from not being "best practice" and to be honest i don't think unless you went and told me i'd notice any difference between the two. Now i appreciate that isn't quantitative but from experience i didn't see much difference if any.

[Kinnison]

Hello,

Comment edited to remove its content as it no longer serves the context of this discussion.

Regards.

[sjesse]

Certain things can break if VMotion isn't on its own network. VMotion really should be on its own, unrouteable network, to prevent issues. It depended on the environment if you run into the issue, but it's also a easy problem in most cases to prevent.

[Tibmeister]

So what will happen is the vMotion traffic will try to use the Management vmKernel interface for traffic, since it's on the same subnet with the vMotion vmKernel, and can cause some really funky, unexpected behavior.  It does this because the IP stack will use the interface with the lowest metric in the subnet, which is vmk0.

[Kinnison]

Hello,

Comment edited to remove its content as it no longer serves the context of this discussion.

Regards.

[MaxB]

I wouldn´t say that there will be a "problem". But its absolutely not recommended as mentioned.

For lab and may qa enviornments you could also enable vMotion service on the management VMkernel port.