ESXi 5.5: How does it handle NICs on hosts clustered but not HA

BlizzardX · 23 Apr 2015 at 11:10

Hi,

I'm currently looking in ESXi to replace my Xenserver 6.5 setup as it doesn't handle different numbers of NICs per host in a pool. Basically, do you need to have the same number of NICs per host in a non-HA'd cluster or does it not matter like it does in Xenserver? I have a number of hosts with a different number if built in ports (some ex lease servers and some custom built) and I would like to know how its handled.

Thanks,

Chris

BlizzardX · 23 Apr 2015 at 11:25

Hi and thanks. What I meant was that I do not want or need HA enabled, just clustering if possible. Obviously I can create multiple datacentres in vcentre to control this if I cannot cluster.

BlizzardX · 23 Apr 2015 at 21:07

Morning all,

Ok so I will rephrase everything to try and make my question clearer. This is also a homelab so don't need to follow the official ways if necessary.

In Xenserver 6.5 you have the option of adding standalone servers, pooling servers or pooling with HA. The issue comes that when you pool a number of servers that have different numbers of NICs, Xenserver simply takes the largest NIC count and replicates that across all member servers, leading to issues with servers that do not have more than 1 NIC. The advantage of pooling in Xenserver is the ability to access a single shared network storage device and the ability to migrate/move Vms across the servers and this can be achieved without the need for HA.

So, with that in mind, does Esxi (using Vcentre), allow you to 'pool' hosts in to a single cluster (without HA) with different numbers of NICs, with the ability to move VMs around from server to server?

If the above doesn't work, if you don't 'pool' can you still migrate VMs from one host to another using vcentre or move to some form of shared storage that all the hosts can access?

Thanks,

Chris

BlizzardX · 28 Apr 2015 at 11:24

Thank you very much, that makes perfect sense and appears to be exactly what I wanted to hear! I'm not looking for High Availability here, just the ability to move VMs around and start on a server manually if necessary. As I generally have to passthrough some devices, I don't do much migration but the ability to move to a general store if I need to take down a host or do something is good.

Again, thank you!