Reference Guide

vStart 100 and 200 VMware vSphere Reference Architecture
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―Mgmt‖ is a VMKernel port, which allows the ESXi kernel to communicate with the management
network.
LAN vSwitch configuration Figure 4.
5.3 SAN Architecture
The SAN includes two PowerConnect 7048 or 6248 switches, which support iSCSI data traffic. The two
switches are connected together with stacking modules on each switch. In addition, the solution
supports up to eight 1Gb uplinks from each switch to link into an existing core iSCSI network
infrastructure. If required, 10Gb uplink modules may be added to each switch.
The two switches are connected using two 10Gb Inter switch links (ISLs). The two 10Gb Link
Aggregation Groups (LAGs) provide a path for communication across the switches. In addition, the LAGS
support traffic between EqualLogic arrays if more than one array is present in the configuration.
The traffic for the SAN is also segregated into its own VLAN. This facilitates isolation from the default
VLAN and gives a separation between SAN traffic and any other traffic that it may come across if the
SAN is uplinked to a LAN or extended to another SAN for replication.
For each PowerEdge R720, a single virtual switch is created to support all SAN traffic. Four 1Gb
physical networks that are dedicated for iSCSI traffic are connected to this virtual switch (as shown in
Figure 5). Four VMkernel (vmk) interfaces are created and each VMkernel interface is associated with
only one physical network port.