Multiple Management Networks

[marknashe]

In the environment that I support, I see there are two different vSwitches with management networks. Neither vmkernel is on a  true management network (OOB), so I'm wondering what would be the benefit of having more than one? Both are connecting to the same upstream switches.

I recently added a new host to the cluster, but only added 1 management network (it's on the same subnet as all the other hosts), but when I added it to the cluster, I saw HA warning that it couldn't reach the other management networks (2nd management network) on all the hosts.

Only benefit I can see is if there is some type of network issue with the particular subnet. Seems somewhat useless to me

Mark

[narenotpp]

this is mainly to avoid management network isolation situation in vSphere HA. as you can see, when you added one more host and configured only one VMKernel for management, HA has started giving you warning that there's no redundant heartbeat network.

and even though it's on same upstream switches operating in same subnet, it gives you link redundancy that if there's a failure at VMNIC, link or switch level, you will still have a way to reach to host to manage it.