Hello.
I have a cluster pair of NetApp FAS 3020c and a pair of Dell PowerEdge 1950.
My task is to implement extensible architecture which will be easy to extend
(add new servers) and robust.
Each filer has one ds14mk2 (423 GB SATA) ds14mk4FC (123 GB FC) with 2
spares.
Filers and servers are attached to gigabit cisco C2960G switch. Each filer
is attached with two cables into the switch. On each filer vif is configured with
lacp. Switch is also configured and runs EtherChannels. Each server has
6 ethernet ports, only 4 of them were connected. I use one port for ESX
Service Console, two ports are used to provide network connectivity for
virtual machines, and last cable is intended to handle VMotion and NFS
traffic.
There were no free ethernet ports on cisco switch, when servers were connected
to switch with 4 cables. So i attached servers to filers directly, by doing this i
managed to free two ports on switch. I made this to isolate NFS and VMotion
from switch. But i also have 8 additional licenses for ESX, so 4 additional servers may be
added to ESX cluster. So i do not know how to setup my environment for additional
servers.
If i leave servers directly attached to filers i will not be able to directly connect
new servers directly because there are no free ethernet ports on each filer. I
cannot be sure that there will be free ethernet ports on switch when new servers
will be avaliable.
If i attach servers back to switch my NFS and VMotion traffic will be flowing through
etherchannel with virtual machines network traffic. This i think may significantly impact
network performance.
