vSAN requires a VMkernel network configuration for synchronization and replication activities. This port group should generally be dedicated and isolated to vSAN traffic. However, if a 10 gigabits network interface is being used, it can be shared. 1 gigabit networks require a dedicated network interface card (NIC) to be assigned to the port group.

The following are the major decision points regarding vSAN network configuration:

• Network speed requirements: All-flash vSAN configurations (with Advanced and Enterprise Edition) will only work with 10 gigabits Ethernet network uplinks. A 10 gigabits network is required to achieve the highest performance (IOPS). VMware recommends a 10 gigabits Ethernet connection (MTU 9000) for use with vSAN in all configurations.

• Type of virtual switch to be used: vSAN supports both vSphere standard virtual switch configurations and distributed switch configurations. A distributed switch allows network I/O control to be used for the prioritization of bandwidth. It allows the interface to be shared and prioritizes performance levels in contention scenarios. VMware recommends using a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) for the vSAN port group.
• Jumbo frame: vSAN supports using jumbo frames for vSAN network transmissions. VMware recommends using jumbo frames for vSAN, but only if the underlying physical environment is already configured to support them.
•  Business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) and teaming considerations: BC/DR is critical in any environment in case of a network failure. vSAN supports teaming configurations for network cards to enhance the availability and redundancy of the network. VMware recommends that configurations use an active/active redundancy with a route based on physical adapter load for the teaming in the environment. Idle network cards do not wait for a failure to occur and aggregate bandwidth in this configuration.