Windows Various ESXi questions including running an Active Directory Domain Controller

As I understand it, for iSCSI, bonding NICs won't increase throughput, right? (unless you have each VM on a separate iSCSI target, each target with it's own IP address)

 

DON'T BOND iSCSI!!!!!

Use MPIO instead.

 

Ehmmm... can you provide any link explaining the whys and hows?

 

iSCSI doesn't work correctly over a bonded network.

For MPIO look at something like

http://www.emeirell.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iscsi-multipathing-mpio.html

 

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virt...-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vsphere.html

This is a great MPIO guide as well

 

Thanks a lot! That info will prove very useful once I start building all up. +rep
Those instructions seem to be for ESXi 4.1. Do you think anything changed in 5.1?

 

5.1 gives the ability for bigger datastores & smaller block sizes which is good.

Nothing major has changed regarding configuration (I jump between v4.1, v5 & v5.1 without noticing any real changes)

 

OK, so NIC bonding is not a good choice for iSCSI. But is it for VM traffic?
Say I have a machine with 4 NICs. I put 2 NICs on a separate VLAN from the rest of the network, together with the NAS-es that serve iSCSI. Would it be a good idea to bond the other 2 so that the VMs get less congestion? Or should I do MPIO on each VM too?

 

MPIO for iSCSI, teaming/bonding for VM traffic.

I'm assuming you've got a managed switch connected to this then? You'll need to team/bond the ports on the switch for the VM traffic (& make them trunks) & stick the iSCSI ports in their own vlan as access ports

 

Yes I have a managed switch. I'll enable LACP on the ports for VM traffic, but why should I make them trunks?

 

If you're using multiple vlans on your VM network then they need to be trunks (you'll also need a router but that's another matter)

 

AFAIK you shouldn't need to trunk them on the switch, I've hooked up teamed NICs to non-trunked ports before and it's worked perfectly

Also you can separate the VLANs on a vSwitch and get vSphere to do the routing

Edit: a bit more detail. Enable VLAN tagging on your physical switch ports that the host is plugged into, then create a single vSwitch. From there, create two Virtual Machine Port Groups with the VLAN tag numbers you need, and attach the VMs to those port groups - vSphere will handle the VLAN tagging/untagging and effectively hand the VM an untagged port to its vNIC.

 

The bonded ports for VM traffic don't need to be part of multiple VLANs, so trunking shouldn't be necessary, right?

Edit: Just a clarification: I don't use VLANs now, but when everything will be setup, I'm thinking of moving the NASes that handle iSCSI and the NICs that will handle iSCSI on the ESXi host to a separate VLAN to spare them of all the broadcast chatter from the main network.

 

You don't need trunks if you're not running multiple vlan's out to an external network.

I always have to as I'm running environments that need it, we have combinations of multiple customers running on one setup & things like IP phones running on virtualised PBX's so vlans are compulsory for us. Therefore I always do it on training labs etc I set up as I need my engineers to be able to work on our production setups (we have our vsphere training lab connected up to our Cisco lab)

If it's a small flat setup then you'll be fine without vlans

 

It will be a small business setup. One ESXi host to start, running 1 Windows Server and 1 Linux Server. Storage will be on iSCSI exclusively.

 

In that case make sure you've got a very good backup in place (at the esxi level).

Personally I never use a single host on a site, always clusters.

 

What do you mean by "backup at ESXi level"? Backing up the .vmx vmdk etc.?
Veeam is capable of this, isn't it? Is the ability to backup a running VM available in the free version?

In the beginning there will be only one host, but others will follow.

 

Veeam is exactly what I use for backups.
For lab use there's a free full version, if not you have to pay for the good version.
Vmware's own backup program you can install isn't too bad for free.

 

Is the limited free version available for commercial use? (haven't found this specified on their site)

 

The free version only supports manual backup. To schedule them you need a paid for version