iscsi bindings and port groups

[phillbl]

Hi,

We have one esx 5.1 server connected to a storage device that is iscsi based.

the server is connected using two iscsi vmkernal ports.  each nic has a different ip on the private iscsi vlan.  the setup is as per vm bast practice using only one nic per vmkernal port.

we need to do a storage migration to some other storage but i have yet to intall it.  i would like to know if its possible to create two additional vmkernal port groups using the same nics already connected to iscsi storage.  the new port groups are on a seperate vlan and different netwok so from looking it just looks like i am sharing the two nics for two different iscsi networks.

as mentioned above i have not installed the hardware yet but from a little testing it looks like i can add the port groups using the nic and i have  managed to bind them to the vmhbaxx with the storage adaptor with the path staus as not used.  so hopefully when i connect the new sorage i should hopefully be able to connect once i setup a discovery?

any comments welcome.

thanks

[rickardnobel]

I can not see why you shouldnt be able to do what you describe. It is somewhat unusual, but it should work to create several VMK adapters on the same vSwitch and do the same active/unused configuration as you already did, but set another VLAN id and IP address on the new adapters. Of course the two logical VMK adapters will share the same network link, but that you are fully aware of.

As long as it is not stated in some manual or KB article as an unsupported solution you should be fine.