Supported no. of static vnics for the Palo and Vic CNAs for ESX 5

[ADAman]

hello,

I have looked everywere to see this clearly described. Most sources only list the no. of dynamic vnics supported. Then I found a document describing the no. of adapters for both static and dynamic types for some OSes and ESX 4. But not ESX 5. Does anyone have a CISCO document describing this? I think the documentation is vey vague on this.

If no doc, just tdll me, please.....M81kr and the VIC

[abbharga]

Hi Atle,

UCS will support the same number of physical interfaces as supported by vmware on ESX 5. With M81KR the number of PCI interfaces which you can create depends upon the number of links between the IOM and the FI (which can be the only limitation from the UCS).

./Abhinav

[ADAman]

hi,

What I want to know is the number of static interfaces suported. What if the customer does not want to use vm-fex?

Clearly, my understanding is that the dynamic interfaces are used for VM machines only.I know it depends on the number of links and chassis. From what I can see in config limit tables, we never can configure more than 4 static interfaces per 2FIs.

Does this mean Vmware network design only can have 2 vmnic uplinks?  2 per FI. In this case, what is a normal design?vmkernelin one and console on the other and all other traffic on vm-fex dynamic interfaces? I am looking for a document that proposes how to do this.

[lwatta]

If it's on the blade servers the number of nics is 13,28, and 56. This corresponds to 1, 2, and 4 uplinks between your FI and IOM.

Is this blade or rack mount.

[abbharga]

Atle,

The calculations is used to provide the number of PCI interfaces you can create per server, this will give you the total number of vnimcs (static and/or dynamic) + vhba.

./Abhinav

[ADAman]

Sorry,I don't get this. In the tables provided by Cisco,  I never saw more static interfaces than 4. For 1, 2 or 4 links. So please explain this more, how many are supported, and if I am right that they should be used for Vmware administration traffic such as vmkernel, console, mangement. The VMs use the dynamic vnics only.

[ADAman]

hi, do you have a source for this?

[Robert Burns · Accepted solution]

The calculation like Abi said is based on # of acknowledged uplinks.

The calculation is [15 * (# of acknowledged IOM links) ] - 2.

1 Uplink = [15 * 1] - 2 = 13 vNICs/vHBAs

2 Uplink = [15 * 2] - 2 = 28 vNICs/vHBAs

4 Uplink = [15 * 4] - 2 = 56 vNICs/vHBAs

Source: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/configuration_limits/2.0/b_UCS_Configuration_Limits_2_0.html

Regards,

Robert

[ADAman]

ok, the only issue left then is ESX 5. Why is ESX 5 only mentioned with dynamic interfaces in this reference? For static interfaces, only ESX 4UI is quoted. Does this mean "Esx 4 UI and up"? Thanks for clearing up. Will provide another CISCO table later saying something else, though, that sparked off my confusion.

[Robert Burns]

Save UCS limitations should also apply to vSphere 5.  I'll have the documentation updated.

Regards,

Robert