It’s not unusual when presenting the NIOC
feature for a client, they ask me:
Is it possible to prioritizing the traffic
of just a group of VMs ?
The answer is yes !!!
But first let’s remember what NIOC is:
Network I/O Control (NIOC) is a feature on
the Distributed Virtual Switches (vDS) that when the hosts detects a congestion
on it's network card, it will then starts to prioritize the traffic flowing from it.
To prioritize it's network traffic, it uses the SHARES concept (the same concept we are used to with vCPU and memory shares of a VM).
You can configure the shares on the
following traffic types:
- vMotion
- iSCSI
- FT logging
- Management
- NFS (Network File System)
- Virtual machine traffic
- vSphere Replication traffic
That’s when the client realizes all the traffic
for the virtual machines will get the same priority and then the inevitable
question pops up.
Luck of us that the NIOC has been enhanced
with vSphere 5.0 and now it includes the capability of creating a user defined
network resource pool.
With that in mind, you can create a new
network resource pool, give it a higher share than the Virtual machine traffic and
associate this resource pool with a PortGroup.
If all your VMS are on the same Port Group you wound not be able to prioritize the atraffic among them.
You will need to segregate your VM's traffic, creating new PortGroups/ VLANs, let’s say for critical VMs, or databases then you can give them a
higher priority over the others.
Let’s see how to configure it.
- On vCenter, go to Home/Networking
- select the vDS that has the portgroup you
want prioritize.
Make sure the NIOC is enable.
- click on “New Network Resource Pool”
- add a name, a description (optional) and
adjust the share as you wish.
- click OK
as you can see the New Network Resource Pool has been
created
It’s time to associate this resource pool
with a Port Group
- click on Manage Port Groups
- Select the Port Group you want to change
and on the Network Resource Pool Column select the Network Resource Pool you just
created. Click OK
There’s also another way to associate a
Port Group with a Resource Pool.
- Right Click on the Port Group you want to
change and select Edit Settings
- Select Resource Allocation
- Change it for the desired Network Resource
Pool.
- Click OK.
Now you can give the network priority your
VMs deserves.
