VMware ESX and dual homing

Question

We are beginning to deploy VMware ESX servers for Windows production environments. How do I set up the VNICs to dual home the VM's to separate Catalyst 6500's.
Thanks, Lisa

Answer 1

Hi Steve,
Specific to VSS by itself, that is available and shipping today, but support for the FWSM with VSS is not yet available (as you have already noted :-). I am currently hearing Q3CY08 as a possible timeframe for supporting VSS and the FWSM, but that is not written in stone. In the mean time, you could still take advantage of VSS to do the multi-chassis EtherChannel, just not with the FWSM included.
Specific to the question on the quad mezz cards, I personally do not have any experience with this specific card, but do know that teaming/bonding software is getting better every day, but we all know that not everything works as advertised, so in that case (and actually, in every case if you think about it), any such design should be fully tested before going into production, to make sure it works as expected/desired.
In your post you mention the 3020 (HP Cisco blade switch). That does indeed throw a bit of a wrench in the works, since as you noted, the NICs will each go to separate physical switches in the enclosure, thus making EtherChannel type solutions on the server impossible. In that case, I normally recommend a simple Active/Standby form of teaming/bonding, as it is robust and deterministic (proprietary forms of Active/Active, in my experience, are neither). If you did decide to go with pass-thru (instead of 3020) to a VSS environment, you could then take advantage of the EtherChannel type teaming, but then you introduce the headache of all of those cables from the pass-thru's, which defeats one of the more common purposes many people go to blades, reduced cabling.
Another solution that would give you the best of both worlds in a blade enclosure (reduced cabling and EtherChannel teaming on the servers), is to look at the new 3120's just coming out. With their stacking ability, multiple switches look and act as a single logical switch (exactly like the 3750E), so when these are deployed in the enclosure and stacked, you can indeed use EtherChannel on the server NICs while still getting cable reduction for the enclosure.
HTH, Matt