VMotion NIC on SAN or LAN??

[cglutz]

Hi,

We are planning our ESX 3.0.1 deployment and want to configure our servers correctly. My question is regarding VMotion and whether the dedicated NIC should be on the LAN or on the SAN.

Also, does Virtual Center need a NIC on both the LAN and SAN to perform a VMotion Migration.

Our thoughts for ESX Switch Configuration

Switch 0 - "VM LAN 1" - Service Console

Switch 1 - "VM LAN 2" - VMs

Switch 2 - "VMKernel" - iSCSI Connection to SAN

Switch 3 - "VMotion" - Dedicated NIC for VMotion

Thanks,

Chris

[Mayur_Patel]

for vmotion:

On the SAN - your ESX hosts have to be able to see the same LUNS, so that when the running process of a VM is transferred from one to another, there's no need to copy the vmdk files.

On the LAN - you should dedicate a Gig NIC on each host for this purpose. I deally they would be connected in a private network so that there's no "unnecessary" traffic on that segment.

Virtual Center doesn't need to be on the VMotion network, nor does it need to be on the SAN. I t only needs to be able to communicate to the ESX Host through port 902 (that's the port for the Virtual Center Agent that get's installed on the ESX host when you add it to VC.)

Hope this helps!!

Mayur

[cglutz]

To make sure I understand correctly, you are saying that the VMotion NIC should actually be on it's own network that only the VMotion NICs would use.

ex.

LAN 111.111.111.x

SAN 111.111.222.x

VMotion 111.111.333.x

Chris

[Mayur_Patel · Accepted solution]

That's the ideal congiuration. Although, you can put vmotion nics on a network shared with other traffic, but it's better to isolate the network traffic, you'll get a better ratio of success.

In ESX 3.x, some guys even put the console nic and vmotion on the same vswitch, with 2 uplinks(pNICS) connected and separate the traffic via VLAN tags.

I prefer to separate the networks personally.