I forgot to explain why the above iSCSI vSwitch config also includes a Service Console port in addition to the vmKernel port - this is added because iSCSI authentication is performed over the Service Console port and not the vmKernel, so we add a Service Console to make sure all iSCSI authentication traffic stays on the iSCSI network.

This was the case with ESX 3.x anyway - any idea if this is still the case with ESX 4?

vmware-vim-cmd hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set vmkX

Where X is the number of the VMkernel NIC to be enabled for VMotion. The esxcfg-vmknic command can be used to enumerate the VMkernel NICs so that you know which one to use.

Thanks for sharing your information!

Note 1: This configuration example only applies to standard ESX v4 vSwitches. Distributed vSwitch MTUs are directly configurable via the vCenter GUI.

Note 2: In order for Jumbo Frames to function, MTU size (9000 bytes) must be enabled on all related hardware ie. iSCSI SAN, Network Switches & ESX server.

Note 3: In this example, two physical NICs are connected to each vSwitch for failover/redundancy.

The following assumes the iSCSI switch is vSwitch1 (192.168.200.0/24) and vMotion switch is vSwitch2 (192.168.201.0/24). Names & IP addresses will need to be changed to suit your deployments.

This needs to be done through the root login at the ESX console.

iSCSI vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch1
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic4 vSwitch1
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic5 vSwitch1
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg=”iSCSI Service Console” vSwitch1
esxcfg-vswif -a -i 192.168.200.153 -n 255.255.255.0 -p “iSCSI Service Console” vswif1
esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch1
esxcfg-vswitch -A “iSCSI Network” vSwitch1
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 192.168.200.53 -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 “iSCSI Network”

vMotion vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic2 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic3 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -A “vMotion Network” vSwitch2
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 192.168.201.53 -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 “vMotion Network”
Tick vMotion tickbox in vCenter GUI (there’s no simple way to achieve this through the CLI, so just do it in the GUI).

Voilla!

Good post–having the right NIC cabled for Service Console traffic is definitely a real-world instance of when these commands come in handy. In fact, it’s an issue that I even address in the Mastering vSphere book! Thanks for sharing that link, and keep up the good posts over at your site!

Great post and idea for a series.

Some additional reference for your readers: I posted a while ago about a real world example scenario that requires using esx-cfg-vswitch and esxcfg-nics. http://vmetc.com/2008/05/26/trouble-pinging-multiple-nic-esx-host-after-install/