ISCSI VMks - Two subnets

[Silver565]

I've done a bit of reading about the recommended setup and have come across mixed information.

I am aware that I have to assign a VMK to each NIC, the question is, what is the limitations?
Can I have 4 NICs with a VMK each?

The reason I ask is that I have found that subnetting can cause a lot of issues. I have an ISCSI unit with two ports. Each port is on a different subnet(as per it's documentation).

Can I have 4 NICs mapping to those two ISCSI ports providing that each VMkernel is mapped to a different vswitch and nic?

I.E:
ISCSI port A: 192.168.1.1/24
ISCSI port B: 192.168.2.1/24

ESXI VMKs(on each nic):
ESXI NIC1: 192.168.1.50/24
ESXI NIC2: 192.168.1.51/24
ESXI NIC3: 192.168.2.50/24
ESXI NIC4: 192.168.2.51/24

 

[NetJunkie]

That should work. Bit overkill since the target only has two NICs, but sure.

 

[Silver565]

Ah thank you

Sorry, I should have mentioned, the target is 10GB/s, the NICs on the host are 1GB/s

 

[0V3RC10CK3D]

Yes you can do it this way.
The alternative would be to keep both storage controller NICs and all storage VMK's on the same subnet, this would benefit in the fact that if a storage controller NIC dies, all of the remaining ESXi VMKs will be able to send traffic to the remaining 10GBE storage controller NIC

However, then you need to cross connect your storage switches, with separate subnets you dont.

 

[Silver565]

Yes you can do it this way.
The alternative would be to keep both storage controller NICs and all storage VMK's on the same subnet, this would benefit in the fact that if a storage controller NIC dies, all of the remaining ESXi VMKs will be able to send traffic to the remaining 10GBE storage controller NIC

However, then you need to cross connect your storage switches, with separate subnets you dont.

Ah thank you. The problem I have is that ports A & B must be on different subnets for the controllers(It's a forced requirement).

We do have two controllers(which I failed to mention. Apologies). However the LUNs that are having performance issues are mapped to one controller only(you can't map them to both.. yet again, another limitation).

I just wanted to make sure that my VMKernels in the proposed setup, didn't break any guidelines