Nexus 1000V newbie question

ingoh · ‎03-01-2010

Hello,

could someone please answer my very simple question:

Do we have to use dedicated physical network interfacecards for nexus control and mgmt for the communcation between the VSM and the VEM or can i use a trunk to transport each of these traffic in a dedicated vlan?

Background is that we have a fully loaded ibm bladecenter and all blades only have two network interfaces which we use for server failover network connection. We like to use the nexus switch to seperate the network and server administration (as in old style infrastructures) and for qos in the virtual environment. But if we need to buy a additional network cards we have to deploy a second bladecenter to get the slot space for the nic blades.

Thx for help...

Ingo

felixjai · ‎03-10-2010

You don't need to use separate physical NIC for Control/Packet and Mgmt. You can use a single vlan trunk port (etherchannel or non-etherchannel) to carry all three vlans (control, packet, management). Just make sure you specify them as system vlans in your system-uplink port profile.

pzpgd1mlf · ‎03-10-2010

If the 1000v is directly connected to N5K, do we need to create those control and packet VLANs on the N5K as well? Thanks

felixjai · ‎03-10-2010

It depends where your VSM is. If your VSM is sitting on a different ESX host (which is recommended not to be on the same ESX host to be managed by 1000V DVS), then you will need Control/Packet (and mgmt) vlans on your N5K and any other switches in between to reach your VSM. VEM on the ESX host won't show up or communicate to VSM without Layer2 connection using control and packet vlans.

pzpgd1mlf · ‎03-10-2010

I see. The plan is to have a couple of ESX hosts with VEM and one of them hosting the VSM, and the 1000v will have (logically) direct connection to the N5K. In this case, I will then create the control and packet VLANs in the N5K as well in order to provide connectivity among the ESX hosts (VEM <--> VSM). As for the mgmt, they are going to have out of band management. Thank you.

ingoh · ‎03-10-2010

Thank you for your answer. So it is as i guess :-).

Thx

Ingo