Note: If you missed Part I and Part II the both outline the overall hardware topology of the 2 c7000 storage and networking both from a core router perspective to HP Flex-10 and Virtual Connect.

You can find PartI here and Part II here.

Moving on from where we left off with virtual connect and defined server profiles ESX/ESXi will need to be installed.  Once installed you will have your host with 1 nic assigned to one virtual switch for the service console without any redundant nics.

Unclaimed Network Adapters should look like this picture below.

• Vmnic1 will be assigned to the service console
• Vmnic 2 and Vmnic 3 will be used in a Dvs for Vmotion
• VMnic 4 and Vmnic 5 will be usedin a Dvs  for Fault Tolerance
• VMnic 6 and 7 will be used in a Dvs for virtual machine network traffic with port groups for both production and development virtual machines.

Step 1: Create a redundant service console.

The first step should be assigning VMnic1 to the service console available network adapters on each ESX host via the vswitch0 the regular virtual switch.  This is the same as ESX version 3.x and below.  You may also want to take out any virtual machine network that was assigned to that switch in install.

Step 2:  Create a Dvs for Vmotion

Switching views inside of virtual center to inventory networking you will then want to create a new vNetwork distributed switch.  You can customize your name to what makes sense.  Then select the appropriate amount of network uplinks, in our example that is 2 one for the e or f side.  Next you will want to assign specifically the adapters for vmotion….Now the adapters are the same as listed above (vmnic 2 and 3) for each host regardless of being in which chassis will have the ports configured as above just like our server profiles.   This makes it really easy.  Once the switch is created it would be a good idea to rename the port group to something logical for your enviroment.

Next switch views in virtual center to inventory->hosts and cluster->(host)->configuration->networking->distributed virtual switch and define your vmkernal for vmotion.  This is the same as a standard vswitch and has to be done on each host.  Again, since we didnt assign the vmotion or FT networks to a shared uplink the networks will only communicate between the flex-10 switches.  I like this for added security.  This means you can use any non-routable address scheme (e.g. 192.168.99.0-255/255.255.255.0).

Step 3:  Create a Dvs for Fault Tolerance.

This is the exact same as the Vmotion example.  Switching views inside of virtual center to inventory->networking you will then want to create a new vNetwork distributed switch.  You can customize your name to what makes sense.  Then select the appropriate amount of network uplinks, in our example that is 2 one for the e or f side.  Next you will want to assign specifically the adapters for fault tolerance….Now the adapters are the same as listed above (vmnic 4 and 5) for each host regardless of being in which chassis will have the ports configured as above just like our server profiles.   This makes it really easy.  Once the switch is created it would be a good idea to rename the port group to something logical for your enviroment.

Next switch views in virtual center to inventory->hosts and cluster->(host)->configuration->networking->distributed virtual switch and define your vmkernal for fault tolerance.  This is the same as a standard vswitch and has to be done on each host.  It is very similar to vmotion instead of checking the box for vmotion check the box for fault tolerance.  Again, since we didn’t assign the vmotion or FT networks to a shared uplink the networks will only communicate between the flex-10 switches.  I like this for added security.  This means you can use any non-routable address scheme (e.g. 192.168.98.0-255/255.255.255.0).

Step 4: Creating a Dvs for Virtual Machine traffic with 2 Vlans

This is similar to the above examples, but different in that our Dvs will have 2 port groups each specifically mapping the Vlan for the routed traffic since there connected to shared uplinks….Going with our first post lets say vlan 96 is a development network and 97 is a production network….I like to create seperate Vlans for ease of use for ACLs etc…

Switching views inside of virtual center to inventory->networking you will then want to create a new vNetwork distributed switch.  You can customize your name to what makes sense.  Then select the appropriate amount of network uplinks, in our example that is 2 one for the a or b side or c and d (depending which chassis the blade resides).  Next you will want to assign specifically the adapters for virtual machine traffic….Now the adapters are the same as listed above (vmnic 6 and 7) for each host regardless of being in which chassis will have the ports configured as above just like our server profiles.   This makes it really easy.  Once the switch is created rename the port group created to something logical like productionvms and assign the corresponding VLAN id 97 in this example.  Then click the switch and add another port group rename it to something logical like developmentvms and assign the corresponding VLAN id 96 in this example.

Now when you create a new virtual machine or move a virtual machine to the new cluster you will need to specify the network port group on the virtual machine for it to communicate on.