My Lab Configuration

Motherboard:

Supermico X8DT6-F

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm?IPMI=Y&SAS=Y

Processor:

2x intel x5650

Product SpecificationsIntelSupport

RAM:

192GB of Samsung DDR3 M393B2G70BH0-YH9

Storage:

1x512GB SSD for Template datastore and 4x1TB SSD for VM datastore

Network:

Motherboard comes with two onboard NICs, I added two more with an Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter to have a total of 4 NIC's

Product SpecificationsIntelSupport

Switch:

Cisco WS-C3560G-48TS

cisco-catalyst-3560g-48ts-switchCisco

Case:

Currently on top of an anti-static bag that is sitting on top of a hard plastic container top that is on top of a file cabinet lol

Network Configuration:

Virtual Networking Configuration

vSwitches: My configuration has two vSwitches. One for routing out to the internet called WAN and the other for internal routing/switching called LAN.

The LAN vSwitch includes both onboard network interfaces and the WAN vSwitch only has one network interface from the Intel PCI network card.

The ISP plugs into the network interface on the external intel PCI network card, and the two onboard network interfaces plug into my Cisco switch.

I created a PortGroup called WAN and added the physical port the ISP plugs into.

On my primary OPNSense firewall the WAN interface is tied to the WAN portgroup. This allows the virtual firewall to have a public IP address from the carrier.

The remaining interfaces on the OPNSense firewall point to various port groups to allow routing/switching to internal networks.

Physical Networking Configuration

The Cisco switch is configured as an ether channel to support bundling multiple links for performance purposes.

Etherchannel Summary output

SWC-FLNY-HO-01#sh etherchannel 1 summary
Flags:  D - down        P - bundled in port-channel
        I - stand-alone s - suspended
        H - Hot-standby (LACP only)
        R - Layer3      S - Layer2
        U - in use      f - failed to allocate aggregator

        M - not in use, minimum links not met
        u - unsuitable for bundling
        w - waiting to be aggregated
        d - default port


Number of channel-groups in use: 2
Number of aggregators:           2

Group  Port-channel  Protocol    Ports
------+-------------+-----------+-----------------------------------------------
1      Po1(SU)          -        Gi0/47(P)   Gi0/48(P)

Etherchannel port configuration

sh run int gi0/47
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 157 bytes
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/47
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport trunk native vlan 100
 switchport mode trunk
 channel-group 1 mode on
end

sh run int gi0/48
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 157 bytes
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/48
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport trunk native vlan 100
 switchport mode trunk
 channel-group 1 mode on
end

switchport mode trunk tells the port to allow passing multiple VLANS.

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q configures the port for IEEE dot1q encapsulation vs ISL or negotiate.

switchport trunk native vlan 100 is needed so that i can still access the esxi/vcenter page because management sits in VLAN 100 so packets for that VLAN are not tagged.

channel-group 1 mode on configures the etherchannel to group 1 and statically sets the port to on vs using PAgP or LACP negotiations.

Software Configuration

This server configuration can only support esxi up to 6.5 and vCenter 6.5

Esxi is currently installed on a Samsung T3 USB SSD drive. I originally had it on a USB3.0 drive but for some reason when upgrading to esxi 6.5 it didn't like it.

I am using the linux vCenter 6.5 appliance. It appears as a VM in esxi.