6.0.1

Networking Best Practices for vSphere vMotion
Consider certain best practices for conguring the network resources for vMotion on an ESXi host.
n
Provide the required bandwidth in one of the following ways:
Physical Adapter
Configuration Best Practices
Dedicate at least one
adapter for vMotion.
Use at least one 1 GbE adapter for workloads that have a small number of memory
operations. Use at least one 10 GbE adapter if you migrate workloads that have many
memory operations.
If only two Ethernet adapters are available, congure them for security and availability.
n
For best security, dedicate one adapter to vMotion, and use VLANs to divide the
virtual machine and management trac on the other adapter.
n
For best availability, combine both adapters into a team, and use VLANs to divide
trac into networks: one or more for virtual machine trac and one for vMotion
Direct vMotion trac to
one or more physical NICs
that have high bandwidth
capacity and are shared
between other types of
trac as well
n
To distribute and allocate more bandwidth to vMotion trac across several
physical NICs, use multiple-NIC vMotion.
n
On a vSphere Distributed Switch 5.1 and later, use vSphere Network I/O Control
shares to guarantee bandwidth to outgoing vMotion trac. Dening shares also
prevents from contention as a result from excessive vMotion or other trac.
n
Use trac shaping in egress direction on the vMotion port group on the
destination host to avoid saturation of the physical NIC link as a result of intense
incoming vMotion trac. By using trac shaping you can limit the average and
peak bandwidth available to vMotion trac, and reserve resources for other trac
types.
n
Provision at least one additional physical NIC as a failover NIC.
n
Use jumbo frames for best vMotion performance.
Ensure that jumbo frames are enabled on all network devices that are on the vMotion path including
physical NICs, physical switches and virtual switches.
n
Place vMotion trac on the vMotion TCP/IP stack for migration across IP subnets that have a dedicated
default gateway that is dierent from the gateway on the management network. See “Place vMotion
Trac on the vMotion TCP/IP Stack of an ESXi Host,” on page 141.
For information about the conguring networking on an ESXi host, see the vSphere Networking
documentation.
Virtual Machine Conditions and Limitations for vMotion
To migrate virtual machines with vMotion, the virtual machine must meet certain network, disk, CPU, USB,
and other device requirements.
The following virtual machine conditions and limitations apply when you use vMotion:
n
The source and destination management network IP address families must match. You cannot migrate a
virtual machine from a host that is registered to vCenter Server with an IPv4 address to a host that is
registered with an IPv6 address.
n
You cannot use migration with vMotion to migrate virtual machines that use raw disks for clustering.
n
If virtual CPU performance counters are enabled, you can migrate virtual machines only to hosts that
have compatible CPU performance counters.
n
You can migrate virtual machines that have 3D graphics enabled. If the 3D Renderer is set to Automatic,
virtual machines use the graphics renderer that is present on the destination host. The renderer can be
the host CPU or a GPU graphics card. To migrate virtual machines with the 3D Renderer set to
Hardware, the destination host must have a GPU graphics card.
Chapter 13 Migrating Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 123