Today, 10 G Ethernet consider as common technology at least to the enterprise customer. Many of us are looking into 10G Ethernet from server to switch via L2 or L3 networking perspective. The main reason behind this are due to the Virtualization and Cloud Computing technology driven. Few years ago when we came out the design with multiple gigabits NICs on the ESX host to support NIC teaming, load balancing and etc, which may end up deliver around 14 Gbps of network bandwidth and 8Gbps of FC bandwidth per host. Each ESX host are consolidate 20 to 30 virtual machines. At that time, this may be the best option we could had done due to technology limitation. Is this design GOOD enough? I will say yes for previously, and NO for today technology availability.

Photo shot of the real environment which have 14 gigabits NIC Ports and 4 x 2 Gbps FC.

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