VMware vSphere network setting best practices

Correct network configuration is the basis of the VMware vSphere architecture. To implement VMware networks, IT administrators need to understand the physical interfaces and vswitches of vSphere hosts. Learn how to plan the vSphere virtual network.

VMware vSphere networks start with correctly installing the ESXi host on the vSphere network, including options for distributed, standard, virtual, or physical switches. Finally, configure and deploy and monitor the traffic of the virtual network.

The first step in configuring a virtual network is to integrate vSphere deployment into the existing architecture. You need to understand the status of the existing architecture. For example, if the network uses iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface), SAN (storage area network), or NFS (network file system, you need to configure more network interfaces for the vSphere host. In most cases, the six NICs are the minimum configuration, and many hosts require 10, 12, or more NICs.

VSphere Virtual Network Installation Guide

To connect to the Management Network of the ESXi host, at least one physical Nic is required. However, the best practice is to configure two NICs for redundancy.

VMware vMotion can share a management network, but it is recommended that you configure a dedicated vMotion network and ensure a bandwidth of more than 1 GB. Similar to the Management Network, two NICs are used for redundancy configuration.

If you use the vSphere Fault Tolerance (Fault Tolerance) feature for high availability, you will need an additional set of NICs, perhaps 10 Gb. In the VMware Fault Tolerance System, all statuses of the two nodes must be fully synchronized, resulting in a large amount of network traffic.

A dedicated Nic is also required to access the network in the storage area. This is only applicable to iSCSI or NFS environments. Like other networks, the storage network also needs another redundant network card. If you use fc san, you do not need to configure a dedicated Nic for storage access. It has its own dedicated interface.

After these functions are installed, users who need to access virtual machines in the vSphere network are considered. We recommend that you use a dedicated set of redundant network cards for access. So far, the implementation of basic functions requires at least eight NICs.

Configure the nic in the vSphere Network

The first challenge for configuring the vSphere environment Nic is to install the management network, which is completed during the installation of the vSphere server. This step is a bit complicated: there are at least four network ports, but there is only one connection to the management network or VLAN. From this time point, the interface shows only a group of bound network cards.

However, the vSphere installer cannot identify which network port is connected to which switch, so multiple attempts are required. If the management network is correctly configured, the installation is complete.

Next, you need to install the vswitch on the installed vSphere host. You must install at least one vswitch for the vSphere network architecture.

VMware Virtual Switches are based on VMkernel communication control tools. Virtual machines need to be configured to access the physical LAN through virtual switches. Standard switches must be configured for each independent virtual host. However, the distributed switch system can be shared across the ESXi host system to simplify the management of virtual networks.

You also need to determine how many vswitches are configured for the virtual network. In some cases, you can connect all the virtual hosts to the same vswitch. In other cases, for example, when physical security is the top priority, it is best to create at least one vswitch for each host to completely isolate traffic.

Before you start to install the first ESXi host, make a plan to learn about the VMware network configuration type to be created. In this way, you can purchase the right hardware and start from the very beginning to build a network and move towards easy management.