Hi Everyone!
Been a long time since I’ve posted, partly due to the fact that I’ve switched from being a VMware Sr. Systems Engineer (SE) in pre-sales to a VMware Sr. Technical Account Manager (TAM) under professional services and being focused on the new role! But I am eager to write some new posts, and have a few topics in mind, so keep your eyes open!
An item that recently came up for one of my TAM customers is supportability of Multi-NIC vMotion beyond 2 physical uplinks (commonly referred to in this context as vmnic adapters.) There may be some confusion around the fact that the reference KB below for configuring Multi-NIC vMotion walks you specifically through a 2 vmnic setup, and whether that implies the supported configuration maximum for this feature:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2007467
Does this imply that the supported configuration maximum is 2 adapters? Not at all, but this even had me initially confused and unsure, so I started checking internally.
Ultimately, our customer pointed out the vSphere documentation section on vMotion Networking Requirements, which clearly states that you can support more than 2 physical adapters for this feature. Example from vSphere 5.5 documentation:
You can configure multiple NICs for vMotion by adding two or more NICs to the required standard or distributed switch. For details, see the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2007467.
I’ve made the suggestion that this KB article be updated to call out the same statement written in our vSphere documentation to help clarify this fact to those who may reference it in support situations or when determining their options for implementing this feature. Our customer in question configures 4 physical uplinks for Multi-NIC vMotion to support effectively moving VMs with very large amounts of RAM assigned between ESXi hosts.
Aaron Smith
Sr. Technical Account Manager | VCP5-DCV
@awsmith99
Virtually Understood 