VMware networking - PortChannel or not?
- by dunxd
My ESX hosts each have 8 NICS.
I have set up 2 NICs for our iSCSI SAN - each is connected to a different SAN switch.
2 NICs are set up for vMotion and Service Console - these are each connected to a different core switch (ports are trunked with VLANs dedicated to vMotion and Management)
I now have four ports left over. Currently we have these set up each going into our default VLAN. Two NICs are connected to one core-switch and two are connected to the other. We decided to aggregate the connections to each switch - so they are teamed at the vswitch end, and port channelled at the physical switch end.
I am now reading that port channelling these connections is not particularly useful, perhaps even over complicating things.
Is there a particular problem with using port channels for VMware? What method provides the best balance between redundancy and performance?
