I have had a look around and found a number of different discussions regarding the best solution for simlar senarios but nothing quite close enough to convince me to implement the proposed solution.
The configuration I have been left with is not ideal, as it is not redundent. So I need to find a solution pritty quick.
Two nics (each nic goes to different switch) - Service Console
Two nics (both go to same switch) - vMotion
Two nics (both go to same switch) - Prod (10 portgroups)
Two nics (both go to same switch in an ether channel) - Storage (iSCSI)
The environment is a three cluster ESXi 4.1 U1 ENT+ environment, connected to a vCenter STD.
Below is what I am planning to allocate, but was hoping someone would be kind enough to suggest the best configuration. I realise the amount of connections for Prod is excessive and we will neaver reach that bandwidth requirements, but I have the nics free.
Two nics (each nic goes to different switch) - Service Console
Two nics (each nic goes to different switch) - vMotion
Four nics (two pairs going to different switches) - Prod (10 portgroups)
Four nics (##) - Storage (iSCSI)
The part that most concerns me is getting the configuration for the storage nics right as we use ether-channels, which seems to complicate things from what I have read.
So in summary I want to utilise four nics for storage and not lose bandwidth I currenlty have using the ether-channel. If I can work it another way without the use of ether-channels I am happy to review.
If I have not provided enough information to evaluate, please let me know and I will provide more.
Thank you in advance for any helpful information.