VMware Networking for Home Lab

[nitrobass24]

Looking for some advice on how to configure my NICs & virtual networks for my vmware lab.

I have the following setup

2x ESX5.5 Hosts with 2 NICs each
1x Synology 1812+ hosting an iSCSI datastore
1x 1810-24g switch

My original thought was to just setup NIC teaming on the ESX hosts, but after I did that I could not bind a vmkernel nic to my iSCSI storage adapter.

I am also getting a bunch of complaints from vmware about my management network not being redundant.

Net of all of this is I am new to the vSphere world, so looking for some general advice.

 

[REDYOUCH]

Add both NICs as active/standby for the vSwitch.

Make two iSCSI vmkernel adapters, and alternate overriden NIC teaming order between them. Bind those to the software ISCSI initiator.

 

[RESTfulADI]

Small correction REDYOUCH, active/unused is required for network port binding and the rest of your post is spot on.

OP, use LACP on the Synology and MPIO on vSphere as described above. ESX will alternate IO between the two initiator ports and the 1810-24g/Synology LAG should hash the target connections. Your host config should look similar to this: