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compdigit44

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Software iSCSI and limited pNIC's

Here is our current setup which is not ideal and built long before I started.

8 ESXi 6.5 hosts
1x 2 port fiber
1x 1GB management port

Right now all Vm guest and NFS traffic are on one vswitch and use the same physical interfaces. Here is my question / problem. We have a new iSCSI SAN. I have created a software iscsi interface but cannot bind any pNIC's because they are all in use. Is my only option to have the iSCSI traffic use the same vswitch and vlan as well?
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Looks like it!

or add another interface if possible!
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compdigit44

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Hancock, thank you for your reply. I was trying to create a new vlan for our iSCSI traffic but with on vswitch and only two active pNIC it does look like it will be an option. Should I reuse the existing vmkernel used for NFS or create a new one on the same vlan?

Thanks for the confirmation.

P.S: I have setup block storage before but never software iscsi in ESXi believe it or not....
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Thank you very much
If my NFS and soon to be iSCSI will be on the same vLAN couldn't I used the existing vmkernel interface? My concern is if I add another vmk on the same vlan as NFS NFS traffic might try to go down the path of the ISCSI vmk who's IP is not listed on the NFS export policy.

P.S: This is not idea by a constraint I have to work with.
I would use different IP Address ranges for NFS and iSCSI!

So technically traffic is segregated by IP Address, although using the same VLAN.

and then  you create VMKernel Portgroups 2 x NFS on IP Network A, and 2 x iSCSI on IOP Network B all using VLAN C.

this separates traffic
this is my problem though, only have one fiber card with 2 ports and VM and storage traffic uses those ports.
I even thought about using one one pnic per vmk which I know is horrible
if you have two physical nics connected to a vSwitch, what is the issue ?

you can have many VMKernel Portgroups on a vSwitch......(they are virtual nics)
but how will the current nfs traffi know to use the correct vmkernel if two vmk's are on the same vlan
because the VMKernel Portgroups have different IP Addresses on different sub networks

and usually your NFS NAS will have an IP address on the same network as your VMKernel IP Address.

e.g.

NFS - 10.10.1.1 NFS VMKernel Portgroup - NAS (NFS) 10.10.1.250

iSCSI 192.168.1.1 iSCSI VMKernel Portgroup - iSCSI SAN 192.168.1.250
I am going to have to look at this more tomorrow, I know I am missing what you are saying
try it and use vmkping to send traffic (e.g. a ping) out of the correct VMKernel, and see if it reaches it's destination!
I am going to create a new question since I already accepted this one..

Thanks Again