Whitepaper: SAP Solutions on VMware Best Practices Guide

6.2 Networking
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
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<strong>SAP</strong> <strong>Solutions</strong> on VMware
Best Practices Guide
The standard VMware networking best practices apply to running <strong>SAP</strong> applications on vSphere:
Allocate separate network adapters/networks for vMotion, VMware FT logging traffic, and ESX/ESXi
console access management.
Allocate at least two network adapters for <strong>SAP</strong> data traffic to leverage VMware NIC teaming
capabilities. Generally, at least four network adapters are recommended for each ESX/ESXi host.
Use the VMXNET3 network adapter - this is a paravirtualized device that works only if VMware Tools
is installed on the guest operating system. The VMXNET3 adapter is optimized for virtual
environments and designed to provide high performance.
To support VLANs in vSphere, the virtual or physical network must tag the Ethernet frames with
802.1Q tags using virtual switch tagging (VST), virtual machine guest tagging (VGT), or external
switch tagging (EST). VST mode is the most common configuration.
Follow the networking design guidelines in VMworld 2011 session VSP3864 Best Practices for Virtual
Networking. This includes designs to efficiently manage multiple networks and redundancy of network
adaptors on ESX/ESXi hosts.
Follow the guidelines in the ―ESXi Networking Considerations‖ and ―Guest Operating Systems‖
sections of Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5.