Blade server BL480c - Configuring vSwitch0 for SC & VMotion

[kkonadu]

Hi

The BL480c Blade server comes with four NICs. I am installing ESX 3.0.1 and aiming at the following network configuration:

NIC0 & 3 - vSwitch0 - Service Console and vMotion

NIC1 & 2 - vSwitch1 - VM guests (will host two port groups)

Has anyone done it this way before and can NIC0 & 3 be set up as Active and Standby Adapters for SC and vice versa for VMotion? Does NIC0 & 3 need to be set up as trunk ports? Can VMotion port group use a private IP address in this set up?

[demz]

I got almost this config.

I've a BL460c configured like this :

vmnic0 : SC (VMotion failover)

vmnic 1,2,3,4 : VM network

vmnic5: VMotion (SC failover)

With vmnic0 & vmnic1 on an embedded network dual-port card and vmnic2-5 on an external quad-port network card.

I set up a VLAN 101 for SC, 102 for VMotion and VLAN 16 for my VMs.

[kkonadu]

Thanks Demz,

Do you have both vmnic0 & vmnic5 on vSwitch0? Are they set up as trunk ports on the physical switch? And isVMotion VLAN using a private IP address?

[sparky84232]

I have attached a screen shot.....i have all of my vswitch uplinks configured as trunk ports on a cisco 3020

interface GigabitEthernet0/1

description ESX01ServiceConsole1NIC0

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q

switchport mode trunk

speed 1000

[demz]

Yes vmnic0 and vmnic5 are both on vSwitch0, and all ports are configured as trunk ports.

My VMotion VLAN is in 168.124.1.xxx

[dconvery]

You should REALLY set up your networking with an eye towards redundancy on the VMotion port as well. Like this:

vmnic0 / vmnic 3 = vSwitch0 - SC/Vmotion

vmnic1 / vmnic 2/ vmnic4 / vmnic5 = vSwitch1 - Virtual Machine networks.

vmnic 0 is attached to physical switch 1

vmnic 3 is attached to physical switch 2

Set preferred paths in vSwitch0 so that SC prefers vmnic0 and VMotion prefers vmnic3.

You should design your network just like the SAN: with an eye towards resiliency and redundancy. This way, if any part of the network path fails, mezzanine card, switch, cable, etc. There is an alternate path for SC, VMotion and VM networks.

kkonadu - your original post showed it correctly, but you may want to consider another Mezz card for additional bandwidth on the VM Networks.

Dave