White Papers

vStart 1000v for Enterprise Virtualization using VMware vSphere: Reference Architecture
Page 15
Figure 4: vSwitch, NPAR and I/O Module Configuration
Traffic Isolation using VLANs: LAN traffic is separated into four unique VLANs; one VLAN each, for
management, out-of-band management, vMotion, and VM traffic. Network traffic is tagged with the
respective VLAN ID for each traffic type in the virtual switch. Routing between the management and
out-of-band management VLANs is required to be configured in the core or the S4810 switches.
Additionally, the Force10 S4810 switch ports that connect to the blade servers need to be configured in
VLAN trunk mode to pass traffic with different VLANs on a given physical port.
Load Balancing and Failover: This solution uses Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID
configuration at the vSwitch for load balancing the LAN traffic. Any given virtual network adapter will
use only one physical adapter port at any given time. In other words, if a VM has only one virtual NIC, it
will use only one physical adapter port at any given time. The reason for choosing this option is that it
is easy to configure and provides good load balancing across VMs, especially in the case of a large
number of VMs.
Inter Switch Links for S4810s: The two Force10’s S4810 switches are connected using Inter Switch
Links (ISLs) using two 40 Gbps QSFP+ links. Link Aggregation Groups (LAGs) are then created between
the two 40 Gbps QSFP+ ports, providing a path for communication across the switches.
Note that the two switches can also be stacked together. However, this is not recommended, as this
configuration will incur downtime during firmware updates of the switch or failure of stack links.