number of Gigabit network ports

[T G Manikandan]

I am planning to run 3/4 VM on a ESX host. What would the number of Gigabit adapters/ports that I would require for this configuration.

Is the mapping like like Gigabit ethernet adapter to 1 VM?
Apart from three VM's,I am also planning to use the ESX host for FT,vmotion.

Please advise.

P.S. This thread has been moved from  VMware>General to  ESX. -HP Forum Moderator

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

How much traffic will those 3/4 VMs consume?

There is no fixed mapping of 1 VM to 1 physical NIC, so links can be shared or even 'teamed'.

Here is a link to an older paper, which I think gives a good overview over the capabilities of virtual switches:
- VMware Virtual Networking Concepts
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/resources/997


The minimum for the FT logging link is 1 GigaBit, but it really depends on how much throughput is processed by the protected VM(s). It is quite possible that 1GbE is not enough.

FT requires careful analysis and planning. Do not expect that you can easily enable FT on arbitrary VMs and be happy!!

[Steven Clementi]

Best Practice would call for a minimum of 8 NIC's...


2 for Management
2 for VM Networks
2 for vMotion
2 for FT

(2 for redundancy, you can certainly configure only 1 interface for each catagory, but then no redundancy)

If you are lacking NIC's... then you can probably get away with 6.. or even 4... but as stated, it depends upon the network i/o requirements for the vm's you are looking to run.

If you are limited to 6 nics.. I would do

2 for management and vMotion
2 for VM Network
2 for FT


Steven