10G network with 3 hosts

[cphillips]

Hi all,

I'm looking at setting up the following:

2 x ESXi 6.5 hosts. Each host has a 2x10Gb NIC.
1 x desktop PC. This has a 10G NIC (single).
1 x Netgear Nightawk router with 1x10G NIC

I have a fibre going from my current server to the Netgear router and this works fine.

I would like to know if the below is the right way of doing it:

The desktop PC won't be on all the while so I may need a switch between that and the servers..

Any thoughts?

 

[bman212121]

Not really, no. The last time computers were chained like that was when we had Thicknet over coax, and you had T adapters to plug in the cables. (20+ years ago) Ethernet uses the "star" configuration, meaning that one device has connections to all of the other devices. That's why you use a switch when you have more than 2 devices that need to talk to each other. Obviously 10gig switches are really expensive, so you don't necessarily want one if you don't have to.

By default your configuration you drew up will be 3 separate networks, and basically nothing will work at all because none of the computers know which interface to send out traffic from. You could technically bridge the connections on both of the servers, and that setup might actually work, but bridging means shared so both servers and the desktop will all share 1 10gbe link. Performance is going to suffer because for it to actually work a request coming into a server will have to be resent out the other interface so it can travel to the next hop. So a packet from your desktop to server 2 will also be sent to server 1 and to the router. Server 2 would be the only one to accept that packet, but every device in that chain has to receive it for stuff to work.

So if you want it to work, I guess you really do just want at least a 5 port 10gbe switch, so you can pass traffic between the devices. I definitely wouldn't recommend attempting how you have it setup now because even if it does work it's less than optimal.

 

[thecold]

I agree buy a switch.

 

[cphillips]

Thanks both, was just after clarification. All was clear after having it explained in simple terms! Switch now ordered (gone for 1G primarily as cost difference to 10G is cosniderable..)