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ZFS/ESXi Network Setup Q's

C

Churnd

n00b
Joined
Feb 3, 2005
Messages
54
Having an all-in-one setup is nice, but my brain keeps getting stuck in a loop trying to figure out the networking part.

My box has 6 NICS (+1 for IPMI but we won't count it). 2 nics are onboard & the other 4 are from an Intel card. I have NexentaStor set up in a VM providing NFS storage to ESXi. ESXi is installed on a 30GB SSD & I have NexentaStor's boot volume running off of another 30GB SSD which was added as a datastore to ESXi. This is working well so far.

What I'd like to do is have a private network between NexentaStor & ESXi for the NFS storage traffic. Do I actually need to use a NIC port for that, including cables & a switch, or can I just set that up logically between ESXi? I do have an 8 port managed switch that I plan to use for this box as well, so should I set up a private vlan for that traffic... say two trunked NICS? How is that best set up in ESXi? I thought it'd be a VMKernel network, but I need to be able to connect to it on the primary network for management.
 
do not complicate things with 6 nics

My way is to use a physical switch that can manage vlans. Define your vlan ports there like san, lan, wan.
Use one tagged port with all vlans and connect this port to your all-in-one box with ESXi.

Now you can define virtual nics on your VM's and connect them to the desired vlan.
If you have a little money over, you may use a 10 Gbit link from ESXi to your physical
switch to have not only fast inter-connects but als a fast connect to your switch to
your workstations, other all-in-ones or backup systems
(i use quite affordable hp procurve 2910's with 4 x 10 GBe Ports as uplink, 1 Gbit port trunking is
not really worth the effort)

Gea
 
danswartz said:
No, just create a virtual switch with no backing nic.
Click to expand...

How does that work? Just create an empty switch and assign some manual IP like 192.168.1.1? Do you have to actually assign a NIC? What port properties do I need to set?
 
No, that's the point. You don't assign any physical NIC to the vswitch. Yes, give it some IP in a different admin subnet you invent. I don't think you need any special properties in the normal case.
 
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