VMware Cloud Community
GotToBeStrong
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Need NIC configuration recommendations

Hello vCommunity,

I am planning a pretty major network upgrade and I'd like to get some recommendations for NIC configurations if possible.

(How many pNICs I'll need for optimum configuration and if there are any pros/cons to various configurations...)

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I currently have 4 Dell PE 2950's, one of which is esx 3.5 and the other 3 are windows native.

I'm planning on adding 1 more server (a Dell r710) and a disk shelf. End result will be all physical servers running vSphere (Standard or Advanced I haven't decided yet) and I will be implementing iSCSI at this point. (Please be kind, i'm an iSCSI noob here)

My existing Dell PE 2950's have 2 onboard pNICs (with TCP Offload). I will probably end up adding a 4 port broadcom gigabit PCIe-4 card (57xx) to suppliment those which would give me 6 pNIC ports on each physical server.

I'm looking for recommendations as to how I should configure for the following traffic: vmConsole, iSCSI traffic, Production Ethernet.

For each individual server:

-- I'd like to keep a dedcated port for the vmConsole (as recommended) on a management vLAN to seperate that traffic from my production ethernet.

-- I'd like to have 2 aggrigated ports for iSCSI traffic - Dedicated vLAN / Dedicated switching

Mixed attachment, some LUNs presented to vHost and some LUNs presented to vGuests.

If the Mixed attachment may be an issue, then I can settle on all iSCSI attachment be at the vHost level, but I would like to keep the layers of virtualization/file systems to a minimum if possible

-- I'd like to have at least 2 or more aggrigated ports for production ethernet traffic from vGuests.

(All ESX hosts will be rebuilt from scratch)

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Given that the ESX install process will want to grab one of the onboard NICs for the console...

I'd like to think that an optimum setup would be to team together the 2 onboard ports for my iSCSI traffic, dedicate one of the Broadcom NIC ports to the vConsole and then aggrigate 2 (if not all 3) of the remaining 3 broadcom NIC ports for my production ethernet traffic.

Thoughts, Comments, Questions, Insults will all be appreciated.

Thank you all in advance!!

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3 Replies
golddiggie
Champion
Champion

I would highly suggest getting a second switch as well, or spanning connections across two physical switches to add redundancy. Also, have two ports allocated for each function, such as two console ports (one to each switch), doubling the others so that you can have everything mirrored on both switches. I would also go with Intel NIC's over Broadcom NIC's every day of the week (twice on Sundays). You'll also want to include ports for vMotion traffic and such.

Properly designing the entire network is not a small task, nor one to be done on the cheap. I created a Visio diagram of the entire environment that I designed for the last job/implementation I did... I'll see if I can locate it and send it off to you so that you can see how that looked...

VCP4

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GotToBeStrong
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thank you for the rapid response,

I understand the recommendation of redundancy at the switching level. As mentioned I'm still undecided about Std vs Advanced, as it stands right now I'm not quite sure my existing procs and my new procs will be compatible for vMotion, so I may end up sticking with vSphere Std which alleviates the requirement for a vMotion port, but you are correct, I had overlooked a dedicated vMotion port.

My iSCSI switching will be dedicated switch fabric and redundant. I already have 2 physical switches for my production ethernet, both with free ports, so I can split across those for vConsoles.

I will take your recommendation about using Intel NIC cards. What, may I ask, is your reason for preferring the Intel?

-M

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jkumhar75
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

If you are trying to use the mix NIC.Here is the link which you can refer,

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/154656

From this we can decide that.it's always advisable to use the same brand of NIC if possible to avoid and issues in your network performance in future.

MCSE,VCP 310, VCP 410

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Jayprakash VCP3,VCP4,MCSE 2003 http://kb.vmware.com/
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