Migrating from Standard Switches to Distributed Switches

[Srinivas_k]

Hi Experts,

We are in process of migrating from Standard Switches to Distributed Switches in 6.0,

Right now we have multiple vendor hardware , like Dell chassis ,CISCO chassis , Dell standalone.

Dell Chassis : we have 4 NIC with traffic Production, Backup, Management & vmotion, NFS all combined in one vswitch 0

CISCO chassis : we have 10 NIC, 2 NIc for production vswitch1 , 2 nics for Backup vswitch2, 2 NICs for management & vmotion vswitch0, 2 NICs for nsf and vmotion vswitch 3 and other 2 NICs for private vlan vswitch 4.

Dell standalone : 6 nic , 2 for Production vswitch 1, 2 for backup vswitch 2, 2 for management and vmotion vswitch 0.

so now we have move above standard switches to Distributed Switches, my question can we migrate this different hardware with multiple up-links to new DV switch.

Please help me.

Thank you in advance.

[bayupw]

The answer to your question is yes you can use a single vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) with multiple hosts, multiple vSphere cluster, multiple hardware, and multiple uplinks

You can have multiple vDS such as:

- one vDS for management & vMotion

- one vDS for Production

- one vDS for backup

- etc

which I think it would be more understandable if someone see your vDS config.

Or you could also create a single vDS for everything.

If you have different PortGroup configuration, you might need to have multiple PortGroups

For example ManagementDell, ManagementCisco, ManagementDellStandalone if they are having different configs.

Or another example ProductionDell, ProductionCisco, ProductionDellStandalone.

You can combine the PortGroups into one if they have identical configuration.

Uplinks are set per hosts, so a single vDS can have vmnic0 & vmnic1 for host1 uplinks and vmnic2 & vmnic3 for host2 uplinks for example

I would suggest you to document and design the uplink and PortGroup first so you can understand which one that are possible to be combined and which one are not

Note: moved thread to more relevant sub-forum VMware vSphere™ vNetwork

[Mathias Raab]

I agree w/ bayupw that u can do a lot w/ vDS.

I guess the for most important task for you is to understand the concept of vDS as it is for ease of management and extended network capabilities.

A vDS matches uplinks to vmnicX - for example vmnic0 corresponds to uplink1

vDS Portgroups match to uplinks - for example Uplink 1 and 2 are actively used by Portgroup vMotion

In this way you can add new hosts very easy without the need of complex configuration.

Your task here will be to evaluate if a one vDS Design can comply with this part of the concept.

Secondly the need of the extended network capabilities should be proofed for every portgroup.

If the ease of management gets lost with the widely varying number of physical nics you should consider different design approaches.

Using vDS only for Production payload and consider an even match of vmnic index numbers for minimum configuration work could be an option.

Hope this can be of any help and good luck w/ that change.

Mathias

[Srinivas_k]

Thanks for the response will try options in test lab.

[Srinivas_k]

Thanks Bayu for the response, as advised i will prepare plan on this and proceed further.