Best networking setup for a two server home test lab

[markhsa]

I am building a test lab ( I want to learn more about VSphere/ESXi, Vmotion etc.. ) and am putting my own linux servers etc…. on it.

I have two ESXi servers, both with only one NIC in them on a 192.168.0.* network.  Also a NAS on that same network.

The more I learn, the more I see that there are typically separate networks for:

-Vmotion

-Storage

-Management

-VMNet??  Don’t know what that is.

What is a good setup for networking on this do you think?  Would two nics per box do it? 

192.168.0.* for Management and general networking on one NIC

10.1.1.* for Vmotion, Storage, and VMNet??

Just wondering if you have any thoughts on this. 

I can see that all if it on one network may not be the best and might cause VMotion issues as well.

Thoughts?

[adamwiso]

It really comes down to what can your switch do, can you tag your L2 traffic on your switch.?  In my lab I have 3 hosts, only two nics in each, and I separate traffic with various VLANs.

Here would be an example how to break that out-

Enable the ports on your switch as trunk ports and create your applicable VLANS.

Then have a VLAN for vMotion, Storage(NFS), Management (think esxi address, vcenter, etc), and then VMNET = vm traffic, these would be your Linux servers, windows servers, with any/all different network you would need.

Mine looks like this

VLAN10 - 10.10.10.0/24 MGMT

VLAN11 - 10.10.11.0/24 vMotion
VLAN12 - 10.10.12.0/24 iSCSI
VLAN13 - 10.10.13.0/24 Fault Tolerance
VLAN15 - 10.10.15.0/24 VM Traffic LAN15

VLAN16 - 10.10.16.0/25 VM Traffic LAN16

Since you are in learning mode, try to achieve this, it will help you from a virtual standard switch or distributed switch.  Once you have your vlans created on your switch, create your port groups, assign applicable VLAN tags on them, and you are off and running.

2 NICS is plenty at this point as long as you logically separate out you networks.