FAS2040 Ethernet Ports

[#1]

I have a FAS2040.  With respect to the Gigabit Ethernet Ports (e0a,e0b,e0c,e0d)

 Right now I have only one physical switch over which I need to run NFS to these ports.  What is the best design to get as much performance and redundancy as possible?  I can use all 4 ports if I need to but for the moment having one physical switch is a constraint that I can't get around.  Should I use only 2 of these ports or all 4?

Thanks! 

[#2]

To best help you we would need to know the complete design, size of infrastructure and exactly what that plans are for this device. You're limited with a single switch.

[#3]

So the layout is this:

-3 ESXi hosts which will connect to NFS datastores on the 2040.  These are running on standalone IBM servers with 1GB ethernet ports

-1 Cisco switch capable of etherchannel and having 1Gb links

-1 FAS2040.  

There is only 1 switch to be used by both the ESXi hosts and the FAS2040.  Bad scenario but this is a lab environment - "do it for free with unused stuff or don't do it all".

Proposed cabling plan

-Use 4 cables to the 2040 from the switch

-1st two cables go to e0a and e0b on controller 1.  e0a and e0b are set up in a single virtual interface, with etherchannel to the Cisco switch]

-2nd two cables to to e0a and e0b on controller 2.  e0a and e0b are set up in a single VIF with etherchannel to Cisco switch]

Given the constraint of one physical switch, is there a better way to do this?

Thanks!

[#4]

What model Cisco switch? 3750?

Make sure you spread out the physical connections on the switch so you're utilizing the different ASICS and not flooding the first one by putting all the connections on the first 10 ports.

Do some research on the switch so you know which ports belong to which ASICS.

LACP VIFs is the way to go. Make sure you add an alias IP to each VIF on the 2040 so each VIF has 2 IP addresses. This is needed to load balance the NFS traffic between the 2 physical connections on the 2040 from the ESXi hosts when using IP Hash in vSphere.

You have one datastore mounted to one IP address and another to the second IP address.

[#5]

OK thanks.  If I have 3 NFS datastores, would I need 3 IPs for each VIF then? 

Supposing I have 3 nfs datstores, would I use the same IPs for each on the VIFs like this?

vif1 on controller 1

192.168.1.10 - maps to my first nfs export on which is datastore1

192.168.1.11 - maps to my second nfs exports on which is datastore 2

192.168.1.12 - maps to my third nfs export on which is datastore 3

vif2 on controller 2

192.168.1.10 - maps to my first nfs export on which is datastore1

192.168.1.11 - maps to my second nfs exports on which is datastore 2

192.168.1.12 - maps to my third nfs export on which is datastore 3

Thanks!

[#6]

Also - Actually the switch model hasn't been finalized yet - might be a 2960

and - 

is LACP preferable to etherchannel if I'm using a Cisco Switch?