Networking Configuration

[MarkGeorge]

Hi,

I have an vSphere setup I'm configuring and was wondering what would be the best way to setup the ESX/switch configuration. The details are as follows:

4 x Dell PowerEdge M610's Blades with 2 x 1GB and 2 x 10GB nics

The chassis currently has a 1GB ethernet switch in slots A1/A2 and a Powerconnect M8024 in B1/B2 with 10GB uplinks

We're not going to be using the 1GB links so it's strictly 10GB all the way so we're going to have to VLAN everything off. What should we do in terms of load balancing though? Normally I'd port channel the vmnics and set it to IP hash but given that the vmnics are going to different switches and they can't be stacked I can't do this? Also integrated this into the network would it be best to use a 10GB uplink from each PowerConnect to different switches in the network?

[vGuy]

one possible option for load balancing would be to divide your portgroups onto separate uplinks, ex:

pNIC1 -> vSwtich0 -> Service Console, VMkernel(VMotion) and VM Network.

pNIC2 -> vSwith0 -> VMkernel(IP Storage).

If you're using ESX 4.1, you can consider using Netowk IO control:

http://ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1537-vSphere-4.1-Network-Traffic-Management-Emergence-of-10-GigE.html

hope that helps..