We currnetly use 4 physical NICs in our ESX/ESXi hosts as follows:
vmnic0 and vmnic1 are teamed and used as follows:
vmnic0 = Service Console Port and NFS access port (and standby for vMotion)
vmnic1 = vMotion (and standby for SC Port and NFS)
vmnic2 and vmnic3 are teamed and used as follows:
vmnic2 + vmnic3 = VM Network traffic and NetBackup client traffic
The vware admin tells me he is following vmware's best practice to not place vmkernet ports on the same physical NICs as VM network ports. Under this model and without using QoS, if we then added a Nexus 1000v, I would have to add an extra physical NIC for the N1K-control and N1K-packet vlans. But as I want to utilise the same number of NICs (or fewer) then I have a few questions:
1) Can I combine all 4 physical NICs and apply QoS to guarantee bandwidth to the SC port, controll and packet vlans etc? Is this a supported configuration by both Cisco and VMware?
2) Are there any guidelines on how to configure QoS for this scenario and specifically about how much bandwidth to assign to specific traffic types e.g. service console/management, vMotion, N1K-control and packet vlans?
Any help greatly appreciated.
