Comments on: How to Provide Management and General VM Network Resilience with only 2 Physical NIC’s on vSphere ESXi 4.0 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0 TechHead.co.uk is a site dedicated to information on various IT technologies, solutions, fixes and IT news. Topic areas include HP Proliant Servers & Storage, VMware vSphere,ESX,ESXi, Microsoft Hyper V and Windows Server Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:51:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: JGM http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10286 JGM Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:17:36 +0000 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10286 Alexdgreen, Great question. Much of the info I read does not discuss jumbo frames and it is the most important configuration second only to resiliency/redundancy. The main reason it is overlooked in most articles is because the MTU settings cannot be configured from within vCenter, you must use the CLI. Dell EqualLogic released an excellent article (below) which is a best practices guide as well as a step-by-step with all the required the commands. It is the most comprehensive I have seen yet. It is written especially for connectivity to EqualLogic SANs but IMO, iSCSI is iSCSI and it 98% applies to any iSCSI storage. The one issue I ran into is that it does not document the commands for those of us running ESXi so I had to translate the esxcfg command into vicfg commands. Not a big deal, but it took some time and there are a couple of commands that I was not able to find the corresponding vicfg equivalent (e.g. esxcli swiscsi nic add –n vmk0 –d vmhba33) Google the following for the article from Dell: CONFIGURING VMWARE VSPHERE SOFTWARE ISCSI WITH DELL EQUALLOGIC PS SERIES STORAGE Alexdgreen,

Great question. Much of the info I read does not discuss jumbo frames and it is the most important configuration second only to resiliency/redundancy. The main reason it is overlooked in most articles is because the MTU settings cannot be configured from within vCenter, you must use the CLI. Dell EqualLogic released an excellent article (below) which is a best practices guide as well as a step-by-step with all the required the commands. It is the most comprehensive I have seen yet. It is written especially for connectivity to EqualLogic SANs but IMO, iSCSI is iSCSI and it 98% applies to any iSCSI storage.

The one issue I ran into is that it does not document the commands for those of us running ESXi so I had to translate the esxcfg command into vicfg commands. Not a big deal, but it took some time and there are a couple of commands that I was not able to find the corresponding vicfg equivalent (e.g. esxcli swiscsi nic add –n vmk0 –d vmhba33)

Google the following for the article from Dell:
CONFIGURING VMWARE VSPHERE SOFTWARE ISCSI WITH DELL EQUALLOGIC PS SERIES STORAGE

]]> By: alexdgreen http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10060 alexdgreen Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:56:10 +0000 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10060 only problem is when you need to enable jumbo frames... i can't enable it on my vswitch0.. not sure if this is because i'm using a broadcom NIC or if it's because I'm using it for management.... only problem is when you need to enable jumbo frames… i can’t enable it on my vswitch0.. not sure if this is because i’m using a broadcom NIC or if it’s because I’m using it for management….

]]> By: Pippin http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10056 Pippin Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:12:50 +0000 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10056 Simon, would you be willing to mention the pros and cons of this setup verses an active/active bonded nic and vlan tagging setup? Regards, Pippin Would you please delete my first post as I left off the followup email request? Simon, would you be willing to mention the pros and cons of this setup verses an active/active bonded nic and vlan tagging setup?

Regards,

Pippin

Would you please delete my first post as I left off the followup email request?

]]> By: Pippin http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10055 Pippin Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:11:36 +0000 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-10055 Simon, would you be willing to mention the pros and cons of this setup verses an active/active bonded nic and vlan tagging setup? Regards, Pippin Simon, would you be willing to mention the pros and cons of this setup verses an active/active bonded nic and vlan tagging setup?

Regards,

Pippin

]]> By: lostbeatle http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-9300 lostbeatle Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:00:38 +0000 http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-provide-management-and-general-vm-network-resilience-with-only-2-physical-nics-on-vsphere-esxi-4-0#comment-9300 Simon, many many thanks. as always a wonderful post and most useful and informative. I trust all is well Regards James Simon, many many thanks. as always a wonderful post and most useful and informative. I trust all is well
Regards
James

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