Vmware ESX & VMOTION

[duhaas]

has anyone configure esx using a virtual connect and than just created a network called lets say vmotion, and than just gave each interface on each esx box like a 192 address??? I was told it was possible to do vmotion within the blade chassis itself but cant seem to ping each interface from the each esx server.

[David Billot]

Nothing special about it really. It's nothing more than creating a vNet that has connectivity to whatever NIC you are using within ESX for the VMotion network. I would recommend downloading the VC Cookbook to assist you with setting this up. You'll find the cookbook in the download section of this interest group. Thanks, Dave

[duhaas]

Thanks for the suggestion, I actually tried a migration of a host after setting each interface to the 192 address and it worked, just weird I cant ping each interface from each esx box. Oh well, will play around with a bit more, but all appears well.

[David Billot]

Actually, not so strange really ESX doesn't provide a full TCP/IP stack for VMotion like it does for the Service Console network. If you are trying to ping from one ESX host to another, then your ping is going to go out the Service Console NIC no matter what NIC or subnet your VMotion network is on. So, lets say you have NIC 1 as your VMotion NIC and it is on the 192.168.0.x network. And let's say you have the Service Console on NIC 2, and it is on the 10.x.x.x network. When you try to ping the VMotion NIC on another server via the 192 network, the ping will go out the Service Console NIC on the 10.x network and will thus be sent to the default gateway and ultimately will come to a dead end (in this case because the 192 network is not routable, but that really wouldn't matter even if your VMotion network was on a routable network the same result would occur.) If this were a standard OS such as Unix, LInux or Windows, then your ping would in fact go out the NIC on the 192 network because the OS would have provided full bindings to all of the possible networks. ESX doesn't do that though. Try this on a few rack mount servers with standard switches, you'll get the same result. Thanks, Dave

[duhaas]

Thanks for the nice reponse, clears things up for me.