Network Best Practice - 2 host, 2 (10Gb) NICs and 4 (1Gb) NICs

[kruegerk]

Hello everyone. I have two standalone ESXi 6.5 hosts that I plan to setup in HA, both have the exact same hardware configuration. I am going to add a vCenter Foundation licenced VM this week.

Each host has two 10Gb iscsi NICs for VM storage located on my 10Gb SAN. They also have 4 (1gb) onboard NICs.  I need to have my HA cluster setup this week for a website project that kicks off at the end of the week.  I will have a vendor that will setup a new web server VM. At this time I don’t know if the vendor will ask for a DMZ, I assume they will.

How would you allocate each NIC for iSCSI, VMotion, MGMNT, VM traffic, and possible a DMZ?

I dont know if it Is possible but I was thinking each host can be setup:

2 (10GB) NICs VLANed for iSCSI (Vm storage) and vMotion

3 (1Gb) NICs teamed and vlaned for MGMNT and VM traffic

1Gb NIC dedicated to DMZ

My enviroment is small, 10VMs.

Thank you in advance everyone!

[kruegerk]

Or would it be better to keep the 10Gb iSCSI NICs dedicated to just SAN traffic for storage. VLAN MGMT, VM, and vMotion Traffic on 3 of the 4 1Gb NICs?

[RaspyBear]

It will be good to have it this way:

2 (10GB) NICs VLANed for iSCSI (Vm storage) and vMotion (fast vmotion using the 10gb network)

1Gb NIC dedicated to DMZ

3 (1Gb) NICs can be used for management and VM traffic.

Also take a look at the following links and video:

VMware vSphere 4 - ESX and vCenter Server

vSphere Documentation Center

Vmware vPhere 6.5 | Part 4: Configure Networking on vCenter Server - YouTube

[kruegerk]

I think that is what i will do. Thank you very much for your input!