Owner`s manual
NetworkingBestPracticesforVMwareInfrastructure3onDellPowerEdgeBladeServers
1 Introduction
This whitepaper provides an overview of the networking architecture for VMware
®
Infrastructure 3 on Dell™
PowerEdge blade servers. It provides best practices for deploying and configuring your network in the VMware
environment. References to other guides for step by step instructions are provided. The intended audiences for this
whitepaper are systems administrators who want to deploy VMware virtualization on Dell PowerEdge blade servers
and iSCSI storage.
The network architecture discussed in this white paper primarily focuses on iSCSI SAN. Best practices for Fibre
Channel SAN are not covered in this document.
2 Overview
The PowerEdge M1000e is a high density and energy efficient blade chassis. It supports up to sixteen half height
blade servers or eight full height blade servers and three layers of I/O fabric (A, B and C), which you can select
between combinations of Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel modules. You can install up to six hot-swappable
I/O modules in the enclosure, including Fibre Channel switch I/O modules, Fibre Channel pass-through I/O
modules, InfiniBand switch I/O modules, Ethernet switch I/O modules, and Ethernet pass-through module I/O
modules.
The integrated Chassis Management Controller also enables easy management of I/O Modules through a single
secure interface.
2.1 Fabrics
The PowerEdge M1000e system consists of three I/O fabrics: Fabric A, B and C. Each fabric is comprised of two
I/O modules which add up to a total of six I/O modules. The modules are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2.
The following figure illustrates the different I/O modules supported by the chassis.
Figure1:BladeFabricLayout
• Fabric A is a redundant 1Gb Ethernet fabric that supports I/O module slots A1 and A2. The integrated
Ethernet controllers in each blade dictate Fabric A as an Ethernet-only fabric.
• Fabric B is a 1/10 Gb/sec dual port, redundant fabric that supports I/O module slots B1 and B2. Fabric B
currently supports 1/10Gb Ethernet, InfiniBand, and Fibre Channel modules.
To communicate with an I/O
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