VMware help

XZiBIT · 6 Aug 2012 at 11:35

Hi Guys,
I need to check that this ESXi box is configured correctly. We are running a Dell PowerEdge T710 with internal nic with 4 ports. The VMware box is hosting 1 DC, 1 Exchange and 1 member server.

Each VM is sat on a separate vSwitch that is linked to a single nic port from the 4 available.

vSwitch0 = Management Network vmk0: 10.x.x.x
vSwitch1 = DC - 10.x.x.x
vSwitch2 = Exchange - 10.x.x.x
vSwitch3 = Member Server - 10.x.x.x

The VM’s are all operating on the same subnet range. Should we have a vSwitch for every server to allow the full use of each nic port or create a single vSwitch and add the available cards to it?

Thanks

ecksmen · 6 Aug 2012 at 12:15

Put the VMs on the same switch and assign a second nic perhaps as standby if one nic fails - configure loadbalancing / teaming depending on switch capabilities. Seperate the console to a dedicated nic and vswitch.

The VMs will now only use the physical nic to talk to machines outside the ESX server, I doubt you'll need even 1Gbps for performance reasons.

anything I don't mind · 6 Aug 2012 at 12:20

What about storage?

I would just put all the nic on one vswitch, seeing as you don't have a vcenter i would just use all four. If you may add another esxi in the future then add one nic to a management vswitch for vmotion and then add the other three to the vswitch with the guests. Might as well if you have them available. But yea i agree with ecksmen you could just add two and leave one unused. Probably won't make any different to performance.

XZiBIT · 6 Aug 2012 at 12:26

Ok that’s what I thought, just getting into VMware so I'm learning from a preconfigured system.

One last thing would our current configuration cause any network issues? It's just that the vSwitch properties shows the detected networks incorrectly e.g only detecting half of the subnet range and sometimes the exchange server can't ping other devices on the network after a reboot.

Thanks again

anything I don't mind · 6 Aug 2012 at 12:44

We set up a vlan 100 on our physical switches for our servers then set the vlan id on the port properties on the vswitch in vmware.

The observed ranges on the switch properties is picked up by from the Packets on the physical switches. If it is not showing the correct ranges then i think the physical switch could be mis configured.