Hello, I am looking for advice on how to provision the networkking interfaces for new and existing Dell servers for Hyper-V R2 clusters. First let me describe what I have.

I have a mixture of 5 PE1950, 1950III and 2950III servers running L5148, L5335 and L5420 Xeon processors. I have the two Broadcom BCM5708C LOMs and an additional 1-2 Intel PRO/1000 PT dual server adapters per server, for a total of 4-6 available NICs. I have Dell EqualLogic storage on the back end. My goal is to use Windows 2008 R2 or Hyper-V Server R2 to setup 2-4 way clusters for my datacenters. I will be buying 1-2 R710 servers to complement my existing hardware. It looks like I will need to bump all of my servers to at least 6 NICs, but should I go Broadcom or Intel? I don't use any of the TOE or ISCSI licenses for my Broadcom NICs, mostly because of problems I had under Windows 2003. Should I care about TOE, iSCSI offload, VMQ or chimney? My VMs tend to be realtively light on CPU, disk I/O and network I/O. My Exchange 2003 server (running under Virtual server 2005) has the biggest CPU load. I also use the Microsoft iSCSI initiator from with the guest for my SQL, Exchange, and file servers to take advantange of integration with the EqualLogic for snapshots in the backup process.

I would also like to know if the the Intel and Broadcom NICs make a difference for my guests and Live Migration. Can I Live Migrate without worrying about the NICs?

Thanks for your feedback. I know that R2 is really new.

Hi,

The R710 has four BCM5709 LOMs. So it would be a waste to not use them and go with Intel instead. I usually try to go with the same type of network controller as the LOMs when purchasing additional network adapters so that I only need one driver for all the NICs. It also makes for a more flexible setup when it comes to teaming. There is no problems with mixing Broadcom and Intel NICs, neither has any big advantage over the other in terms of performance (at least in 1Gbit).

In regard to TOE/iSCSI offload I would for sure try to use it since I'm sure that the drivers has matured since you last tried it on Win2003. VMQ is supported of out-of-box for Intel ET/EF-series (and 10Gbit 82598/82599). Chimney is supported out-of-box for Broadcom adapters 1Gbit 5706/5708/5709 and 10Gbit 57710/57711. When Win2008 R2 was in RC no NIC teaming driver supported the use of either VMQ or Chimney.

There is no difference between Broadcom and Intel when it comes to Live Migration. I would start with one NIC and see how that works, you always have the choice to team two nics for added speed and redundancy. Remember that the current implementation of Live Migration only allows /2 (rounded down) simultaneous Live Migrations. Just Live Migrate your busiest and/or largest VM and try it out.

Good luck! Good choice on the R710, they are excellent servers.