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42710
May 29th, 2008 23:00
VMWare ESX on Blades (m1000e + m600) and network configuration
Have a few questions related to setting up ESX on blades;
1. VMWare recommend that separate physical NIC ports be used for the Service Console, VMotion and Virtual NIC's meaning a minimum of 3 ports on the server. Generally speaking we would normally 2 ports for the Virtual NIC's and run these to separate switches for redundancy. So we currently use a minumum of 4 ports per server (non-blades). Are others only utilising the two onboard NIC's (if so how are ports being configured in ESX?) or are people adding a mezzanine card to the blades to gain 4 ports (and another IO Module in the chassis)?
2. I want to make sure I have this next bit correct... using the passthrough IO modules (either ethernet or fibre) on the m1000e chassis provides a one to one relationship with the ports on the blades. Meaning that is mirrored at , is mirrored at , etc. Is this right (and similar for FC with the FC mezzanine card installed on the blades)?
Appreciate any feedback.
1. VMWare recommend that separate physical NIC ports be used for the Service Console, VMotion and Virtual NIC's meaning a minimum of 3 ports on the server. Generally speaking we would normally 2 ports for the Virtual NIC's and run these to separate switches for redundancy. So we currently use a minumum of 4 ports per server (non-blades). Are others only utilising the two onboard NIC's (if so how are ports being configured in ESX?) or are people adding a mezzanine card to the blades to gain 4 ports (and another IO Module in the chassis)?
2. I want to make sure I have this next bit correct... using the passthrough IO modules (either ethernet or fibre) on the m1000e chassis provides a one to one relationship with the ports on the blades. Meaning that is mirrored at , is mirrored at , etc. Is this right (and similar for FC with the FC mezzanine card installed on the blades)?
Appreciate any feedback.
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Chad Fenner, Di
4 Posts
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May 30th, 2008 13:00
1. Generally speaking I haven't seen VmWare strongly recommend three physical NICs in a while. Vmware software does tend to like having it but as it can virtualize itself as of VI3.0 you only have to have the NICs your bandwidth requires. That being said I would say that most Dell blade customers do order at least 1 extra NIC mezzanine card to have 4 total NICs per blade plus either another NIC mezzanine for iSCSI storage or an HBA for FC storage.
2. Each port is completely separately routed to each switch. All 6 ports then go to the 6 switches completely by themselves. This is done for redundancy. If you have the pass through IO modules you would then get full bandwidth throughput out the back of the enclosure. Keep in mind though that part of the true value of blades is the cable and IO consolidation. Most people have 2 to 1 port aggregation right outside of the enclosure and you can save a great deal of space, cables, power and money by integrating the switches.
Chad
Dropit
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June 2nd, 2008 19:00
Chad Fenner, Di
4 Posts
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June 3rd, 2008 07:00
rmustafa
9 Posts
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September 13th, 2009 15:00
I have one question, I'm having M1000e Chassis with 7 M610 blade server , I can use 2 network card on each blade server,
For you information I'm using 2 blade server as a oracle RAC server, so 1 network for public & other network for private.
As I understand from the chassis is 1 network port of each blade is connected with 1 M6220 switch & other network port of all blade server are connected with other M6220 switch.
No my question is , can I use 2nd network port on all the blade for different subnet ????????????
Note:Our vendor engineer also told me if your using private network in 2 blade server then you cannot make the other M6220 switch as redundant.
Please help me out from this issue.
Thanks,
Rashid