igrobins
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-02-2023 04:28 AM

Is Multi-Nic/Multi-Portgroup vMotion still necessary with vSphere 8

When we were initially setting up vSphere networking, we set up multiple portgroups for vMotion (1 port group per NIC), and then one vmk per portgroup. At the time, our expert explained to me that we needed to do that to utilize the full bandwidth of our 2x10GB NICs. 

Fast forward a couple of years, said expert no longer works here, we now have 4x25GB NICs per ESXi, and I come across this: https://core.vmware.com/blog/faster-vmotion-makes-balancing-workloads-invisible

Reading this makes it sound like that doing this multiple portgroup/vmk vMotion setup is no longer necessary, and I can just use a single vMotion vmk/portgroup. Am I interpreting that correctly?

 

Thank you,

Ian

Reply
0 Kudos
cms7
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎08-02-2023 05:00 AM

VMkernel multi-portgroups are no more necessary from vsphere 7 U2 onwards since the vmotion process automatically scales up the number of streams according to the bandwidth of the physical nics used in vmotion. So its the same with vSphere 8 as well.

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
‎08-02-2023 01:20 PM

How I understand the changes is that vMotion is now able to use >15 gbps of network bandwith on a single NIC. If you however want to use multiple NICs for even more throughput, you still have the option to configure Multi-NIC vMotion, i.e. setup multiple VMkernel port groups with active uplinks.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
igrobins
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-03-2023 08:12 AM

The other response made it sound like the new technology will take full advantage of all NICs, not just one. Is there any way to get confirmation that more vmnics will mean more throughput? 

Reply
0 Kudos