| Networking - 802.1q Trunking and 802.3ad Link Aggregation using Cisco Switches |
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Ok so your server probably has more than one physical NIC, by default most have two built in.
You may have been wondering what is the best network configuration for ESX/ESXi Servers. How many physical NICs to use, which vSwitch to assigned them to and what vSwitch to use for certain traffic. If you have more than one physical switch that supports link aggregation 802.3ad then you may want to take advantage of that too. The number of network cards you have and what your requirements are may differ but I belive the 4 NIC setup is the best for performance, reliability and functionality. You can have more if you like but 4 will certainly suffice. Why would you want to go to the trouble of setting this up and annoying the network team... 1. To present trunk ports to all ESX network interfaces. This is to segregate traffic to different VLANs for improved security (802.1q). Meaning you will be able to put virtual machines onto different VLANs (Maybe you have dev, test and production VLANs). 2. To load balance across NICs and physical switches using the IP hash (802.3ad). This will improve bandwidth usage and increase reliability. Setup the network configuration as follows on each ESX/ESXi Server: Virtual Switch Layout: Virtual Switch Used For vSwitch0 Virtual Machines vSwitch1 Service Console and VMotion vSwitch2 Internal Virtual Switch to Physical NIC to Physical Switch Mapping: Physical Network Interface Used by Virtual Switch Connected to Physical Switch Type vmknic0 vSwitch0 Switch2 Trunk vmknic1 vSwitch1 Switch2 Trunk vmknic2 vSwitch0 Switch1 Trunk vmknic3 vSwitch1 Switch1 Trunk Virtual Networks: Used For Port Group Type VLAN ID Server Network Virtual Machines 11 VMotion Vmkernel 12 Service Console Service Console 12 Failover and Load Balancing Settings for vSwitchX: Load Balancing: IP Hash Network Failure Detection: Link Status Only Notify Switches: Yes Failback: Yes Active Adaptors: vmnicX, vmnicX Standby Adaptors: None Unused Adaptors: None NOTE: You cannot use VLAN 1 in virtual switches with trunking because the traffic is not tagged. Switch Channel-Group Configuration for 802.3ad link aggregation Create a port channel for each server. interface Port-channel2 Switch Port Configuration for 802.1q trunking Make the port a trunk port and assign to that servers channel group. interface GigabitEthernet2/10
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