Best Practice for connecting NAS Storgae

[MaheshVeerappa1]

Hi There,

We have ESXi servers with 4 1GB vNICS. vmnic0 and vmnic1 are configured for management network (vmkernal port) and vmnic and vmnic3 are configured for VM traffic (virutal machine port group). I have to connect Synology NAS and present storage to ESXi.

Considering this sceneio and no more NICs added to the bpx, what is the best way to connect NAS. I do not want to loose redundancy for both management and VM port group.

As of now I have connected like this;

* Connected NAS to switch

* Assigned the IP address to NAS from same subnet of management network.

* Added software iSCSI adaprt, performed discovery and present storage to ESXi box

[AishR]

It's not a best practice configuration to run management and NAS connections on the same NICs. Ideally, more NICs for the NAS iSCSI connections are the ideal solution.

With the current hardware, the best you could do is set up is with separate VLANS for management traffic and NFS/iSCSI traffic.

And setting them in corresponding standby pairs

Management - Active on NIC0 and Standby on NIC1

NFS iSCSI - Active on NIC1 Standby on NIC0

KB on iSCSI with multi NICs: https://ikb.vmware.com/kb/2045040

A similar thread: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/453413

An old blog but still some good info here: https://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2013/02/challenges-with-multiple-vmkernel-ports-in-the-same-subnet.html

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmware-nfs-bestpractices...

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-34297ED3-9D62-4869...

[Nick_Andreev]

What kind of NAS is this - NFS or iSCSI?