Vmware and usage of NIC`s?

[maxrebo]

Hi,

Just wondering how many NIC`s people use on there Vmware ESXI hosts?

We currently use 2 or the 4 available on our Dell Poweredge servers, we use this for Management network redundancy but wondering if I should be making use of the other 2 on the server? and what would people use them for?

 

Thanks

[Domino]

That's a very open ended question, depends on your setup. For instance I've 2 vmotion nics, 2 network nics and 2 storage nics per host.

 

if you've no SAN then the storage is obviously not needed, but I can't see a reason why you'd not team any available nics for vm connectivity.

[FN-GM]

Also take into account of the speed.

 

When we had Vmware each host has 4 10Gbps ports split between 2 cards. 2 x to connect to the core switches and 2 x to the SAN switches.

 

They also had 1 x 1Gbps copper for a backup management connection.

Edited December 14, 2017 by FN-GM

[Norphy]

Back when I did VMware training, the trainer said it was best practice to have the 1st NIC as management and JUST as management. You then choose one of the others as a backup if that one fails. Use some of the other NICs in the server for virtual machine connectivity and Domino says, use others for SAN and vmotion if you're using vSphere. My virtual hosts have eight network ports, I'm using all eight.

[pcstru]

We generally use 8 1Gb ports on 2 cards with each card ports split between two vSwitches, one for the main/management network, one for the Storage Network. If either card fails, the host will keep talking to both networks but the (potential) bottleneck will shrink.

[maxrebo]

Ok thanks everyone, some good information there for me to go away and configure properly