6.5.1

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
To avoid saturation of the physical NIC link as a result of intense incoming
vMotion trac, use trac shaping in egress direction on the vMotion port group
on the destination host. 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 138.
For information about the conguring networking on an ESXi host, see the vSphere Networking
documentation.
Encrypted vSphere vMotion
Starting with vSphere 6.5, vSphere vMotion always uses encryption when migrating encrypted virtual
machines. For virtual machines that are not encrypted, you can select one of the encrypted vSphere vMotion
options.
Encrypted vSphere vMotion secures condentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data that is transferred
with vSphere vMotion. Encrypted vSphere vMotion supports all variants of vSphere vMotion for
unencrypted virtual machines, including migration across vCenter Server systems. Migration across
vCenter Server systems is not supported for encrypted virtual machines.
For encrypted disks, the data is transmied encrypted. For disks that are not encrypted, Storage vMotion
encryption is not supported.
For virtual machines that are encrypted, migration with vSphere vMotion always uses encrypted vSphere
vMotion. You cannot turn o encrypted vSphere vMotion for encrypted virtual machines.
Chapter 11 Migrating Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 119