We are getting ready to replace our existing SAN with a new 10G Dell md3620i with a 1220 expansion chassis. We are adding a dual port 10g network card to all of our hosts. We have a total of 6 hosts. In addition to the dual port 10g cards each host has a total of 8 1gb network connections. I am looking for suggestions on a best practise on the best way to configure the networking on these hosts.
We are using ESXi 5.1 on all hosts and the vCenter server. Each host has 192gb of ram at this time. We have a total of 85 vm's running right now and plan to grow that number with the addition of the new faster storage and the 5th and 6th hosts.
Currently we have pairs of nic ports setup on separate vSwitches.
vSwitch 1 - Management and vMotion
vSwitch 2 - iSCSI
vSwitch 3 - iSCSI
vSwitch 4 - vm's
vSwitch 5 - vm's
Our new setup plans initially are to just take the two iSCSI switches and have just a single port on each for the 2 paths to the SAN.
I have seen people suggest that we should have a single vSwitch with 6 ports teamed for all the vm's on the host to provide the most available bandwidth as it is needed. Not sure what the best setup would be and we are looking for suggestions. Again, we have a total of 6 hosts each with 8 1gb nic ports and 2 10g nic ports for the SAN.
thanks
Zach
