Network Configuration for ESX 3.5

[Fab10]

I am currently setting up a 2 x new servers with the following Hardware setup with ESX 3.5 with update1.

HP ML370 G5

2 x Quad Core 3GHz

36GB

8 x Nics (including the 2 onboard)

This server will connect to an ISCSI Netapp 3070

In the past I would have setup the following on the network configuration (ESX 2.5 / ESX 3.02)

1 x vSwitch with 1 x PNic = Service Console

1 x vSwitch with 1 x PNic = Vmotion

1 x vSwitch with 6 x PNics = Virtual Machine Network

I had seperate Fibre cards to connect to the SAN

I am in a project to migrate the ESX enviroment from ESX 3.02 Fibre IBM SAN attached to ESX 3.5(U1) ISCSI SAN attached.

I have reviewed my network setup and think the following would be a good setup

1 x Vswitch with 8 x PNics = Service Console, Service Console2, Software ISCSI, VMotion and Virtual Machine Network

I have then configured the vSwitch with the following setup in Nic Teaming

Service Console / Vmotion use PNICS 0 with the other PNics 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 set to standby

Service Console 2 / ISCSI use PNICS 1 and 2 with the PNICS 0,3,4,5,6,7 set to standby

Virtual Machine Network use PNICS 3,4,5,6,7 with the PNICS 0,1,2 set to standby

My questions are would you setup this way?

What would your suggest for network setup?

Should I go back to seperate vSwitch's for Vmotion, ISCSI etc?

Thanks in advance on your comments

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I would not quite set things up the way you have them setup.... Some people do aggregate ALL the pNICS into one vSwitch but I find that rather inefficient and a little risky.

2 pNICS for SC on vSwitch0

2 pNICS for vMotion on vSwitch1

2 pNICS for iSCSI on vSwitch2

2 pNICS for VM Network on vSwitch3

If you think your VM network needs extra pNIC add the remaining two there. Note that the VM network can load balance but the others ones do not. Also, This setup will give you better performance for iSCSI than if you aggregated everything together I believe, but if you are unsure, run your some workload tests.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Fab10]

Just to clarify your setup would you have the SC2 on the ISCSI switch or with the other SC switch?

Could I not share the SC with Vmotion and SC2 with ISCSI to have the following

2 pNICS for SC and vMotion on vSwitch0

2 pNICS for SC2 and iSCSI on vSwitch1

4 pNICS for VM Network on vSwitch2

Thanks again for your thoughts on this.