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I'm trying to investigate if VMWare FT will be available in the following networking configuration.

We have 4x 10GbE NIC's, two of which are for the MPIO iSCSI networking, which leaves 2x NICs for the rest of the system.

NIC1: iSCSI MPIO
NIC2: iSCSI MPIO
NIC3: vMotion
NIC4: VM Traffic

Given that 10GbE has roughly 10x the throughput of a 1GbE networking, can FT be enabled on this configuration? I've read in the specs that they require 3x 1GbE connections (Management/vMotion, VM Traffic, FT Logging).

Can VMWare's FT features be enabled in this scenario? Or do I need to go and spec out an additional 1GbE fabric (for the Dell M1000e blade chassis)?

Mark Henderson
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    Can I just say that I'm coveting your 10GbE environment? I'm still stuck with 4x1GB per VM node. :) – EEAA Oct 29 '10 at 01:16
  • @ErikA - the beauty of speccing up a brand new datacentre (that our client is paying for). Interestingly the 10GbE fabrics are less than 2x the price of 1GbE fabrics when speccing out a Dell M1000e chassis. – Mark Henderson Oct 29 '10 at 01:19

1 Answers1

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Yes, that configuration will work just fine, in fact it's quite similar to my own setup. You don't ever really need more than a single physical 1GB NIC for FT and VMotion to work - you can just put them all in one vswitch and enable those features in the management network port group.

I do have to suggest that you put the two iSCSI NICs in one vmkernel vswitch as you plan to but that you put the main vmkernel (i.e. vmotion and FT) traffic in with the VM traffic in the second vswitch and gain the benefit of having both NICs available in case of cable or port failure - the FT/vMotion traffic shouldn't be so high that it really kills the VM traffic or vice versa - if it is then I'd put in two more ports - basically you really want physical redundancy in those ports. Oh and make sure you're aware of all the limitations of FT first ok, it sounds great and works fine but I've always been able to design my way out of needing it as it has some costs.

Chopper3
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