Need help with migrating servers from Standard VSwitches to vDS

[milesmeridith]

I have a two host VSphere environment. Each physical host has two NIC's. Currently I have one host in one subnet and one host in another subnet. Each host has it's own standard VSwitch. I can ping and route between subnets but the DNS servers are completely separate at this time. I would like to create one vDS that spans both hosts without dropping network connectivity. Is this possible? Would it just require creating two port groups with correctly configured uplinks?

[chriswahl]

What do you mean when you say you have "one host in one subnet and one host in another subnet" - do you mean the management address of each, the virtual machine port groups, or the VLANs? Perhaps a logical topology would assist.

[milesmeridith]

Let me start over. Here is the scenario. I have two VSphere Hosts. 192.168.111.130 and 192.168.200.130 VMK management IP. Each Host has two NIC's With one NIC connected to a switch in the .111 subnet and one NIC connected to a switch in the .200 subnet. They both originally had standard switches on them instead of dVS. I tInstalled a dVS on the .200 and now if I put a VM that is associated with the dVS in the .111 subnet(by changing it's IP) it doesn't have an internet connection. I'm going to attached some screenshots so you can see what I"m talking about. I would like to first focus on getting my VM's that our on the .200 host access to both subnets and then talk about how I can migrate the .111 host to dVS without downtime

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[a_p_]

According to the screen shots, I assume you need two port VM groups, one connected to dvUplink1 (Subnet 111) and the one to dvUplink2 (subnet 200). Then attach the VM to the required port group.

André

[milesmeridith]

Thanks Andre. I added another port group, assigned a VM to it, and changed the IP to .111 address, but still no dice. Can't ping anything, no internet. See below. Not sure how I specify a certain port group to a specific vmic. Also why do both vmic's say 200.130 when if you open up the settings and check observed networks only one is connected to the .200 subnet?

[a_p_]

From the two screen shots in your previous reply I assumed you had one uplink connected to the 111 subnet and the other one to 200 subnet. Maybe I was mistaken and the two screen shots were from the two different hosts!? You certainly need a uplinks to both subnets in order to have VM's connect to it. The dvSwitch doesn't automatically route traffic between hosts without the appropriate physical network configuration.

André

[milesmeridith]

No you weren't mistaken they are both from the same host. dVUplink1 is connected to the .111 subnet and dvUplink2 is connected to the .200 subnet.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

How did you configure "Teaming and Failover" in the distributed port group's settings? Can you confirm only the appropriate uplink goups are active and the uplink group for the other subnet is moved down to Unused Uplinks.

André

[milesmeridith]

Ok, that did the trick. Thanks so much Andre! Now maybe I should start another forum but I would like to figure out how to add my other host to the same dvSwitch without any downtime. Is that possible?

[a_p_]

Right click the dvSwitch in the inventory to find the option to add hosts.

André

[milesmeridith]

If I do that it won't cause any down time for the VM's? It's a production server and I don't want any downtime if possible.

[milesmeridith]

I was able to complete the migration with minimal downtime. Less than a minute. This document helped me a lot. Thanks for all your help!

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere-vnetwork-ds-migration-configuration-wp.pdf