Networking advise for new ESXi setup

[preecep]

Ok please bare with me as I'm still new to the world of 'vmware'. I'm about to setup our new vm server infrastructure and was hoping for some advice/guidance to ensure I get it right the first time...

I have two physical hosts with a new installation of ESXi 4.1. Each host has six physical gigabit nics as I’m planning on using iSCSI and vmotion. I also have two HP SANs and two HP gigabit switches. On each host I’m planning to setup the following networking:

vswitch0
- vm network

- service console

vswitch1
- iscsi

vswitch2

- vmotion

Each vswitch will have two physical nics for multipathing purposes (one nic to each HP switch). The HP switches are not stacked as i wish to keep them independent and to prevent any downtime if one switch should fail. The HP sans also have two nics and will be attached to each of the HP switches. I’ve setup two vlans on the HP switches, the first vlan is part of my regular company network and the other is just for iscis/vmotion traffic.

Before i go any further... does this make sense and sound sensible so far?

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I would follow Edward Haletky's advice in "Blue Gears - 6 Physical NICs with VMware ESX."

Good Luck!

[AndreTheGiant]

Note that vmkernel interface usually use only one NIC.

So you can put Management and vMotion on the same vSwitch (or vMotion and FT) and simple put by default on two different NIC.

About iSCSI it's correct that is on different NIC and vSwitch.

Andre