Reply to Message

View discussion in a popup

Replying to:
bayupw
Leadership
Leadership

Love that blog post series by chriswahl

For VMkernel PortGroups I normally use active/standby for things like ESXi Management VMkernel & vMotion VMkernel as these type of VMkernels based on my understanding do not use other vmnics if the first active vmnic is not failed.

I think someone also have same opinion/theory as written in this blog post: vMotion NIC load balancing fails even though there is an active link « rakhesh.com

"my theory is that for a VMkernel NIC (such as vMotion) backed by multiple physical NICs and using the default load balancing algorithm of virtual port ID – all traffic by default goes into one of the physical NICs and the other physical NIC is never used unless the chosen one fails"

For VMkernels to use multiple vmnic, they typically require additional IP address such as in NFS, iSCSI, Multiple-NIC vMotion in vSphere (2007467) or VTEP VMkernel for NSX.

I normally use LBT/physical NIC load only for non VMkernel PortGroups such as VM networks or backup networks.

Depending on the requirements, I also had a project that requires the backup to be active on a specific vmnic and standby on the other vmnic.

Regarding bandwidth, you can use vSphere Network I/O Control to allocate bandwidth for each of the traffic type in vDS

Bayu Wibowo | VCIX6-DCV/NV
Author of VMware NSX Cookbook http://bit.ly/NSXCookbook
https://github.com/bayupw/PowerNSX-Scripts
https://nz.linkedin.com/in/bayupw | twitter @bayupw