vCenter

Hello,

We have a small vmware network, consisting of 2 HP Servers and a SAN. We are purchasing Vsphere ESS with HA.

As I understand it, it is considered best practice to dedicate HA traffic and SAN traffic to a dedicated port on the network card.

What I need is some help with how to set that up.

We will have 2 spare nic ports per server to dedicate to this, one for HA and one for SAN traffic.

Currently, we use 2 ports per server in teeming mode connected to one subnet, and two more ports connected to another subnet, for a total of 4 ports per server. We will be purchasing a 6 port nic from HP very soon, this is the largest they make for our HP DL 365. This will give us the extra 2 ports per server, to dedicate to SAN traffic, and HA traffic.

OR should we just use the spare 2 ports Teemed, to the SAN, and forget about dedicating to HA.

Thanks!!!

Peter

HA traffic runs on the service console / management network. It's a best practice to seperate it but it isn't a must. I would however suggest if you don't have enough NICS to use nic teaming to introduce redundancy, that's more important than anything else when running HA.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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Thanks for your quick reply Duncan.

Then, as far as the SAN traffic. What would you suggest. Dedicate to a seperate NIC? In teeming mode?

Were talking about 6 machines per server, going up to 8.

P

6 NICs should work out pretty well for small environment and my suggestion in combination is:

1. NIC1->Service Console/VMotion

2. NIC2->VMotion/Service Console

3. NIC3-4->Virtual Machine Network

4. NIC5-6->Backup Network, DMZ

I would recommend to seperate these networks on its own VLAN or secure it as much as possible since VMotion is cleartext and it should be protected as well as SC for management VLAN.

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

Should I dedicate a NIC to SAN traffic? We have an iSCSI SAN connected via a 1g switch.

Thanks!

P