Best Practice for Network setup ESX 3.5

[sultanahmed]

I am just setting up a new ESX 3.5 and would like your thoughts on how I am setting up the networking.

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Service Console

4 or 6 NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - VM Network

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Vmotion Port - VLAN

If there are better recommendations then that would be good to know.

[AWo]

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Service Console

O.K.

4 or 6 NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - VM Network

Depends on how much physical networks your host is attached to. I assume one from your configuration.

It is also dependent on your guests running. If you have two guests which communicate heavily with each other youm may want to separate them.

Read this:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/ESX_networking_performance.pdf

Page 23, http://www.vmware.com/pdf/VI3.5_Performance.pdf

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Vmotion Port - VLAN

Hmm, it's O.K., but I don't feel the need for a teamed VMotion setup.

AWo

VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

[Texiwill]

Hello,

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Service Console

O.K.

Not sure I would use Beacon Probing, you do that for debugging not for normal use.

4 or 6 NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - VM Network

Depends on how much physical networks your host is attached to. I assume one from your configuration.

It is also dependent on your guests running. If you have two guests which communicate heavily with each other youm may want to separate them.

This could be overkill.

2 x NICS teamed - using Network Failover detection: Beacon Probing - Vmotion Port - VLAN

Hmm, it's O.K., but I don't feel the need for a teamed VMotion setup.

Definitely no Beacon Probing for this network. You need the 2 pNICS for failover as you will not get more performance.

In most cases Beacon Probing is not something you will want to use unless its for debugging purposes and generally only for a short period of time. By NICS teamed I assume you are using VMware NIC Teaming. In this case you need to define your load balancing method.

Best regards,

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[azn2kew]

Assuming you have total 10 vNICs for use and that's pretty good design and will provide fully redundancies for SC/VMotion/VM Networks/DMZ and Backup networks as well. You would use "Link Status Only" rather than Probe Beacon. Here is the combination of networking configuration:

1. vNIC1->SC/VMotion ->built in NICs

2. vNIC2->VMotion/SC->Intel NICs

3. vNIC3-4->VM Networks->Intel NICs ->you can add more if you need but 6 NICs for VM networks is overkill, and as you can see through traffic analysis each VM doesn't use much NIC throughput though.

4. vNIC5-6->DMZ Networks->Intel NICs

5. vNIC7-8->Backup Networks or iSCSI/NFS if needed.->Built In NICs & Intel ports.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[sultanahmed]

I thought beacon probing was uses so that the ESX host will know quicker if the network has failed, therefore it will send continuous pings and failover straight away. Whereas the link status will wait before sending an error to the ESX host before failing over. In that time all VMs will go off line. Also what is the difference in the load balancing options set on the ESX?

[AndreTheGiant]

what is the difference in the load balancing options set on the ESX?

See page 8 on: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

The default one (virtual port id) usual is the good choice.

If you have switches with Etherchannel support you can try to use "Route based on IP hash"

Andre