Service Console Redundancy

[dap]

I am trying to create service console redundancy. My setup is as follows:

vmic0-service console(vswitch0)

vmnic1-vmnic2-virtual machines(vswitch1)

vmnic3-vmotion(vswitch2)

Can I share one of the NICs from the vmotion or virtual machine switches?

Thanks

[depping · Accepted solution]

you can't share nics between vSwitches! but you could delete vSwitch2, add vmnic3 to vSwitch0 and setup the service console as active on vmnic0 and standby on vmnic3. configure vmotion/vmkernel as active on vmnic3 and standby on vmnic0. this way you would have redundancy with only 4 nics.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

[dap]

thanks!! I just set that up. Basically we had an issue yesterday where a switch rebooted so the service console lost connectivity to the network. The server is part of a HA cluster so all the vms started on the other host. Hopefully this will prevent this issue.

[ndmuser]

Is it right that both nics you use for redundancy (Server console and VMKernel) should be connected to two different physical switches?

[dap]

That would be correct. It would protect the esx host if a switch goes down. If both nics are plugged into the same switch and you lose the switch the service console would lose connectivity to the network.