Question

VMotion in Vmware

Answer 1

Introduction

One of the new performance-level features in vSphere 5 is the ability to use multiple NICs in our vMotion network. While it is true that in our vSwitch of vMotion we can add more than one Uplink, that configuration is Teaming and serves us for high availability, but really in no time will be using more than one interface simultaneously.

The new Multi-network functionality with vMotion allows us to use more than one NIC simultaneously and without the need to have physical switches with Etherchannel.

Version 5 of vSphere gives us an increase in performance in vMotion operations. But if we also add to the configuration of the vSwitches 2 NICs or more, we will see that we will improve the performance of our vMotion operations even more. Especially when the operations are of 2 or more migrations simultaneously.

Vmotion configuration

The configuration is very simple and very intuitive. But with these steps we will achieve an excellent configuration. To our vSwitch of vMotion we will add an additional Port Group (with its corresponding address within the address range of the vMotion network) and an additional NIC.

We will have to configure in each VMkernel Port Group , in the NIC Teaming tab, to overwrite the order of the Failover. We will select one NIC as active and the other in Standby .

In the other Port Group of VMkernel we do the same but crossing the cards, that is, the NIC that in the first Port Group was in Standby , now it must be active and the other NIC that was active in the first Port Group , must now be in Standby . I define it as movements in the game of chess.

The configuration of the vSwitch should be as follows:

As you can see, in reality the configuration is very simple, you just have to alter the failover of the NICs. We must remember that it really starts to get better performance when several vMotion operations are done simultaneously.

With this we will have a great tool configured in our virtual server farm, with virtual switches.

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