How many switches should be configured and min no of NICs?

[TonyJK]

Hi,

We are going to implement ESXi5.0.

We would like to know whether we use different port groups for managment network and vMotion ?  It appears that both of them use the same IP address (Different from ESX 4).

Besides, my supervisor would like to know what is the minimum number of NICs to be used (Due to the Server lacks PCIe slot) ?

Your advice is sought.

Thanks

[rickardnobel]

TonyJK wrote:

We are going to implement ESXi5.0.

We would like to know whether we use different port groups for managment network and vMotion ?  It appears that both of them use the same IP address (Different from ESX 4).

What do you mean with the Management and vMotion using the same IP address and that this is different from ESX4? It is possible to have management and vMotion running on the same Vmkernel interface, but often not recommended. Instead they should be on separate IP networks and VLANs, i.e. on different vmkernel portgroups.

[TonyJK]

In the past, we assign different subnet for Service Console and vMotion.

Since we don't implement VLAN at our site and according to the documentation, ESXi 5 only gets 1 IP Stack, just wonder what is the best way to handle it.

From your reply, my understanding is that we should have different port groups for Management Network and vMotion.  IP address (Like the one previous assigned to  Service Console) will be assigned to the Management Network, we have to find out another way so that VMotion can talk to each other.

Thanks again.

[rickardnobel · Accepted solution]

TonyJK wrote:

Since we don't implement VLAN at our site and according to the documentation, ESXi 5 only gets 1 IP Stack, just wonder what is the best way to handle it.

It is correct that ESXi has only one IP stack, which is very good compared to the two different in ESX (Linux in the Service Console and the Vmkernel). However, that we only have one IP stack means that there is the same tcp/ip driver, but does not mean that we can not have multiple IP addresses.

So you can create how many Vmkernel interfaces as you wish and assign them different IP addresses, which could be on the same network or on different.

Even if you do not have VLANs in your environment I would still recommend using another IP network for vMotion than for your management. This will make it both a little more "best practise", be easier to different and you would also be very well preperred if you will be implementing VLANs in the future.

[TonyJK]

Hi,

Many thanks for clarifying the meaning of TCP / IP stack.  I will assign different subnet to the ESXi 5.0 host.

Thanks again.

Tony