Connect ESXi Hosts with x-over network cable

[hgov]

Have a 2 node ESXi cluster with no intention of adding additional nodes. On this cluster resides 2 identical vApps isolated from each other and the rest of the world. The esxi servers have several physical NIC's connected to switches and the respective VLAN's. There are two unused NIC's in each esxi host. The internal IP addressing in each vApp are in the 192.168 range - non routable and meant to assist in isolation. Since these IP ranges are currently not associated with any physical NIC's, there is no way to communicate within a vApp unless the virtual machines reside on the same physical host.

Is it workable to use two cross-over cables to connect the hosts together and allocate the physical NIC's to distributes switches to accommodate communication within a vApp across both hosts? Currently we have DRS rules that ensure all vm's in a vApp reside on the same host. It works but is definitely not ideal.

Thanks in Advance

[MattStreet]

Yes, I believe that should work. If you create a dvSwitch and allocate the physical NICs, then add a virtual adapter to the vApp VMs assigned to the newly created portgroup / dvSwitch.

Assuming the Guest OS is Windows, you can then configure the new adapter with an IP address / Subnet on a different address range.

Note: It is not recommended to configure an additional gateway address on the new adapter as having multiple gateway addresses may cause network traffic routing issues.

Hit the Kudos if this answers your query 🙂

[HGoverde]

Hi

Yes, it does work as expected. Tried it shortly after my original post and neglected to share the result. I apologize for that.